The Idle Class: Spring 2021 - The Legacy Issue V.2

Voted Best Art Gallery 2020 in “Best of Northwest Arkansas”

Gazing Ball∙Donna Phipps-Stout

Ticketed In-Person Exhibitions Select Art Events & Programming Local & Regional Artists Represented 20 S Hill Ave ∙ Fayetteville, AR 72701 www.ArtVentures-NWA.org ∙ 479.871.2722

2 L E G A C Y IS S UE 2 0 2 1

WWW.I D L E CL AS M AG . CO M 3

THE LEGACY ISSUE 2021 PUBLISHER + FOUNDER Kody Ford EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Julia M. Trupp ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jenny Vos DESIGNER Dana Holroyd CONTRIBUTORS Case Dighero Summer El-Shahawy Dwain Hebda Shannon McGill Sophia Ordaz Andrew Vogler COVERS Warren Criswell Oluwatobi Adewumi

PHOTOGRAPHY Daniel Storms Brandon Watts Arkansas Dept. of Parks, Heritage and Tourism ARTWORK Phillip Huddleston Chad Maupin CADENCE OF THE MOMENT PAGE 8 Award-winning Indigenous artist and songstress Kalyn Fay has only been performing and touring since 2014, but her heartfelt lyrics explore a timeless vulnerability.

FROM COTTON TO SILK PAGE 10 Award-winning textile artist, author, activist and proud auntie Crystal C. Mercer discusses the cultural and familial inspiration behind her upcoming all-ages book “From Cotton to Silk: The Magic of Black Hair.”

WAITING FOR THE MUSE PAGE 16 When creativity can strike at any moment, how do you capture it?

According to Warren Criswell, you build an easel on your steering wheel.

MIRRORED THROUGH ART PAGE 17 Oluwatobi Adewumi reflects upon the human experience to inform his art and spark powerful conversations.

SOUTHERN ROYALTY PAGE 20 Jones Bar-B-Q has been an Arkansas staple for over a century, and earned a James Beard Award along the way. Chef Case Dighero recollects moments of attempted connection with James “Mr. Harold” Jones over a famed barbecue sandwich.

LETTERS TO FRIENDS + STRANGERS PAGE 24 Thirty years ago, Matthew Thompson started a zine with two friends called Fluke. Today, it is still going strong.

THE LEGACY SECTION PAGE 30 We talked with some Arkansans who have made an impact on the Natural State's art scene. Find the full interviews online, and in the meantime, discover who helps make Arkansas arts and culture extraordinary.

INTRODUCING ARKANSAS SOUL PAGE 46 Representation matters. It’s a powerful phrase, but what does it mean?

More importantly, what does it mean to you? Arkansas Soul is on a mission to share the heart, soul and culture of the Natural State, recovering the histories and underrepresented stories of diverse audiences in Arkansas.

Downtown Fayetteville americanshamankavabar.com

1001 Wright Avenue, Ste C Little Rock, AR 72206 501.372.5824 Pyramid1988.com PyramidArtBooks@gmail.com Your source for Afrocentric literature in all genres.

We can order any book in print!

Independent bookseller since 1988

Experience the new Shaman Rec Room, designed by locals.

Art by @OctavioLogo

4 L E G A C Y IS S UE 2 0 2 1

W

hen I moved to Arkansas eight years ago, I had no idea what was in store for me. I came here for the University of Arkansas—and for the trees. Back in my hometown in (dare I say) the Lone Star State, it was hard to find a sense of community unless you were into competitive sports, and I, if you can believe it, was not. I longed to be somewhere I could fit in and feel a sense of belonging before I graduated and launched into my next adventure.

Well, the Natural State really does wrap itself around you. Little did I know, my next adventure would begin right here, after picking up a copy of The Idle Class one fateful day. I harp on about feeling a sense of community in every

W

Arkansas has an amazing, growing creative economy that draws people back once they’ve left. As the longest-running arts magazine in the state, we’re excited to showcase some of the notable folks who are leaving a legacy on the creative life in Arkansas, whether that’s through culinary arts as a barbecue pitmaster or across the radio waves as the Voice of the Ozarks.

To highlight even more of our state’s wonder, we’ve got a special section from Arkansas Soul, a digital media platform and nonprofit organization that promotes the heart, soul and culture of Arkansas’s BIPOC community.

We’ll read about the Latino Art Project, a group based in Central Arkansasthat promotes Hispanic artists around the state; Arkansas Atoll, a podcast that highlights the rich history of Northwest Arkansas’s

Marshallese community; and a personal essay by Summer Wilkie, an Indigenous writer, that calls out the hindrances she has found with Native American land acknowledgements.

I’m thrilled to have Dana Holroyd back as our designer for this issue. I started my editorial journey with this superstar three years ago, and it feels pretty great to collaborate again.

And here’s to Kody starting this magazine almost a decade ago—he might not admit it, but he has definitely been building his own legacy in Arkansas’s art world, and I feel lucky to be a part of it.

This is the third Legacy Issue in The Idle Class’s lifetime, and like its predecessors, this issue covers only a fraction of the greatness in our state—even with 64 pages.

I guess we’ll have to keep doing this!

Here’s to you. Here’s to our community.

Here’s to celebrating legacies in Arkansas arts!

Editor's NOte

editor’s note, but how could I not? Arkansas wouldn’t be what it is without its state pride, creative energy and wonderful folklore that floats through the air, whispering history into our ears as we float the Buffalo River, hike through Petit Jean State Park, or picnic on Old Main Lawn.

Your friendly neighborhood editor,

Julia M. Trupp

publisher's NOte

e made it through 2020, although the new year doesn’t look like it’s gonna be a real banger. But the vaccine is coming so we’ve got that going for us. I’m ready to go to an art opening or have an in-person meeting again. I often find myself longing for a handshake or a Christian side hug—just some sense of normalcy. Patience, I guess.

We are bringing back the Black Apple Awards in 2021. While we are still ironing out the details, it will be in-person, but with COVID safety precautions. So anti-maskers stay home and watch Ancient Aliens or whatever you people do when you aren’t putting lives at risk. I will gleefully have security throw you out if you show up with a chin diaper or your nose peeking out. Wielding such power has been a recurring fantasy for me throughout 2020 so don’t tempt me. Stay tuned to our website and social media for coming Black Apple announcements.

I’m really excited to do another Legacy issue. In 2014, our first one featured Mary Steenburgen, Harry Thomason, Charles Portis and other great Arkansans. (We came so close to getting Maya

Angelou too.) The next year we followed up with a Legacy issue that had a music focus. Now we’ve gone for more of a Hall of Fame approach. I’ll note that this is just scratching the surface.

It’s hard to showcase everyone who’s done great things for the creative life in our state. Consider this an imperfect short list. Julia and I only know so many people. If you feel like we missed someone and should feature them in a future issue, please reach out and make a suggestion. Polite feedback is welcomed.

One of the most exciting things about this issue is getting to team up with Arkansas Soul. Founder Niketa Reed and I go back over a decade when she put up with my incessant hangovers while we made a documentary during grad school. She’s brilliant and an all-around awesome person. Teaming up again seemed natural so we are excited to provide them with a print media platform for issues related to people of color in our state. Special thanks to the Arkansas Soul team including editor Antoinette Grajeda and all their fantastic contributors. I hope we can collaborate again.

Stay safe, Kody Ford Publisher WWW.I D L E CL AS S M AG . CO M 5

Events BENTONVILLE The Scott Family Amazeum UnGala FUNdraiser April 24 $125/ticket amazeum.org/events/ungala UnGala allows your inner child to come out, play and make someone’s day by supporting Amazeum’s initiatives and programs. The event features Amazeum’s unique experiences along with the NWA debut of “Impulse” - an interactive light and sound experience. Come enjoy fused plastic wearables, gravity-enhanced collaborative art-making, a motion-activated flame organ, and an exclusive to-go box featuring meals from local food trucks, adult beverages, and everything else needed to play along at home. For the health, safety and wellbeing of UnGala guests, timed entry tickets are available for on-site exploration by adults 21+ from 2 to 5 p.m. with a virtual, interactive event in the evening from 7 to 8 p.m. Ticket proceeds will support Amazeum accessibility programs. Visit the UnGala website for event details.

Derek Adams: Sanctuary Feb. 23 - June 6 Free themomentary.org From 1936 to 1967, Black American roadtrippers referenced a guidebook, The Negro Motorist Green Book, also known as The Green Book, to identify businesses, including hotels, restaurants, state parks, beauty parlors, and nightclubs, that were nondiscriminatory and welcoming. In Derrick Adams: Sanctuary, this reference material serves as inspiration to reimagine safe destinations for the Black American traveler in an exhibition featuring mixed-media collage and sculpture. In his continued exploration of Black refuge and leisure, and during a time when uneven

6 L E G A C Y IS S UE 2 0 2 1

law enforcement continues to negatively shape the experiences of Black Americans, Adams also offers a space to reflect on the importance, and at times political act, of having the freedom to go wherever you want.

The exhibition is on view in Gallery 1 and 3 at The Momentary.

A Thousand Ways (Part One): A Phone Call March 3 - April 3 $10/ticket themomentary.org Created by 600 Highwaymen, “A Thousand Ways” is an imaginative and original social experience “that delivers us from isolation to congregation.” 600 Highwaymen members Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone created this three-part experience around social distancing guidelines to meet participants where they are. Part One involves a phone call between two strangers. Through this prompted exchange, a portrait of each partner will emerge. Because of the unique nature of the immersive performance, those interested are encouraged to read the provided information at The Momentary website before purchasing tickets. Part Two: An Encounter and Part Three: An Assembly will take place at The Momentary later this year.

PINE BLUFF Meet the Curator: Live Q&A with Catherine Elizabeth Patton “Feeling Through: Examining Emotion in the Midst of Unrest” Virtual Exhibition 5 p.m. March 25 facebook.com/asc701 The Arts & Science Center’s Curator Chaney Jewell will host a video Q&A with concept and portrait photographer Catherine Elizabeth Patton. Patton’s portraiture is on view through April 10 in the virtual exhibition “Feeling Through: Examining Emotion in the Midst of Unrest.” The exhibition, sponsored

by Simmons Bank, is a self-reflection of the Memphis-based artist’s desires to examine her emotions during COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.

EUREKA SPRINGS Hands Online ESSA April 9-11 Essa-art.org Eureka Springs School of the Arts’ annual spring fundraiser, Hands ON ESSA, has moved to an online platform this year, but the organization reassures participants the features are very much the same as years before, if not better. Registrants can bid through the online auction on small works of art by local and regional artists. This year, ESSA will offer three free virtual workshops featuring watercolors, polymer clay, and pastels. The organization will also offer free demonstration videos. Registration is required to participate in the auction and reserve free tickets to the fundraiser events. For more information and a calendar of events, visit essa-art.org.

INTRODUCING

HANDS-ON, INTERACTIVE SESSIONS DESIGNED FOR TEENS & ADULTS. Expand your creative skills through sessions including mold-making, block-printing, and screen printing, lead by professional makers, artists, craftspeople and the Amazeum team.

Maker Sessions are made possible by

Promotional support provided by

MORE INFORMATION AT AMAZEUM.ORG/MAKERS/SESSIONS

1009 MUSEUM WAY | BENTONVILLE, AR 72712 | 479-696-9280 | FOLLOW US WWW.I D L E CL AS S M AG . CO M 7

F A Award-winning Indigenous artist and musician Kalyn Fay has only been performing and touring since 2014, but her heartfelt lyrics explore a timeless vulnerability.

WORDS / JULIA M. TRUPP PHOTO / RYAN MAGNANI

K

Kalyn Fay grew up playing music, but she had no idea she could hold a tune until she was 21 years old.

Nine years later, she has released two full-length albums with another in the works, performed as an inaugural member of Northwest Arkansas’s songwriting retreat House of Songs and toured as far away as Denmark. A Tulsa native, Fay now lives and works in Northwest Arkansas, but her journey extends past physical borders, connecting her inner world, her outer experiences, her Indigenous roots and the thread that holds us all together— time.

In her adolescence, Fay played trumpet in her school band and taught herself how to play piano, but it wasn’t until she decided to teach herself how to play guitar in college that she realized she could also sing.

“I never thought I could sing, so I just didn’t,” she said. “I have a low register voice, so in my mind that meant I was bad at singing because I couldn’t sing along with a lot of things.”

As she dove headfirst into her musical journey, she spent time learning how to become a professional musician and what that would look like for someone heavily involved in the pursuit of higher education—she has a bachelor’s and master’s degree and is now in her thesis year of her Master of Fine Arts in printmaking at the University of Arkansas.

Much of Fay’s songwriting process comes from her own observations and experiences. Her phone’s notes are filled with descriptions of places she’s visited or quotes from meaningful conversations that she uses to craft her songs, which map out stories and connect to people who may be dealing with similar feelings.

“For me, a lot of how I write music is based on the cadence of the moment,” she said. “A lot of

8 L E G A C Y IS S UE 2 0 2 1

CADENCE OF THE MOMENT

[the] time I’m trying to capture the feeling. There’s something about sounds and poetry that allows you to move both in the past and forward. You’re not stuck in one moment. You can be nostalgic and speak to the future.”

When Fay started writing music, she was searching for a way to understand her inner self. She struggled moving away from family in Oklahoma to pursue her education on top of reasoning with her faith and religious beliefs. Processing her feelings pushed her to write music, but she eventually realized she could also write from experience without “having to exist in a state of sadness,” she said, after seeing one of her favorite musicians, Lucinda Williams, perform in Oklahoma City.

“She solidified it,” Fay said. “You don’t have to be sad to write good music. You can just pull from a large well of experiences. It was a good lesson to learn early on. I saw a lot of great musicians fall off and away from the industry because they were hurting themselves or doing harmful things because they thought it would make them better [musicians], and it didn’t.”

She spent about five years building up a song base, touring and playing shows in her hometown of Tulsa, and she finally hit a point where she felt like she had enough songs to start recording.

Then came Bible Belt in 2016, an album that evokes a sense of vulnerability, a narrative of life lived and an homage to her heritage.

“All the experiences are ingrained in [my] Indigenous understanding. I’ve taken a lot of my time here to better understand relationships and ways of being, and I’m just realizing how much those belief systems impact the way I think about the landscape and my relationship with other people. I spend a lot of time traveling between Arkansas and Oklahoma to visit family. [The record is] a lot about being present, observing […] and thinking about liminal space; when you finally hit those points that feel like home.”

Liminality and time are constants in Fay’s life, as reflected in advice she once received that now

Y

guides her everyday: “Time is going to pass anyway, you might as well give it the best you have.”

“I have always loved that, and that’s kind of how I have existed,” she said. “The time is going to pass, so I might as well learn and pursue new things. Don’t worry about failing or not doing good enough. It’s really empowering! I love thinking about the future and what it could be. Sometimes it’s easy to discount yourself and the opportunities you can build for yourself. It’s nice to just say, ‘No, just do it,’ and if it doesn’t work out it’s okay.”

A new opportunity for the rising musician came knocking in 2017 when House of Songs, an Austin-based songwriter summit, opened a location in Northwest Arkansas. Fayetteville Roots Festival cofounder and summit participant Bryan Hembree recruited Fay to be a part of the inaugural cohort. She had only visited Arkansas to see her family in the past, but after spending more time in Northwest Arkansas for the songwriters’ summit and as part of the Fayetteville Roots Fest lineup, she fell in love and decided to relocate to pursue her next degree and gain new connections in the industry.

“I’ve created so many friendships out of that experience, and [House of Songs came] at a point where I needed to push myself creatively,” she said.

Since participating in House of Songs’ first year in NWA, Fay has toured through the southwest, performed as part of Folk Alliance International, participated as a U.S. delegate to the Indigenous Music Summit, sat on several panels and boards and won various accolades for her work in both music and visual art. Most recently, she was the recipient of a 2020 Artists 360 grant, which she hopes to put toward recording and producing her next album, featuring cellist Matt Magerkurth, this fall. “This entire next record is a little shift from my previous records,” she said. While she usually records with a full band, she’s trying something new on this one. “It’s significantly more sparse as a duo.”

While touring isn’t in her near future, Fay is still trying to find a way to connect with people through her music and art. Whether an online performance, exhibition or outdoor event (once the seasons change), the motivator at the forefront of Fay’s mind is finding meaningful connections through different perspectives.

"

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE SAD TO WRITE GOOD MUSIC. YOU CAN JUST PULL FROM A LARGE WELL OF EXPERIENCES.

"

“I never thought I would be where I am and am still surprised.

This has been something so much more than I thought it would.

I thought I was going to be a doctor and travel. Then I moved into graphic design and art and started to make music. Music has allowed me to travel and understand perspectives more than anything else,” Fay said. “Meaningful connection is what I was missing before. Music allows you to do that and you don’t even have to be present. [People are] listening to your music and sharing that moment with you whether you’re present or not.” // KALYNFAY.COM

WWW.I D L E CL AS S M AG . CO M 9

From Cotton To silk Award-winning textile artist, author, activist and proud auntie Crystal C. Mercer discusses the cultural and familial inspiration behind her upcoming all-ages book From Cotton to Silk: The Magic of Black Hair.

WORDS / SHANNON MCGILL PHOTOS / COURTESY OF THE ARTIST Zoom should have a filter or background that makes everyone feel the way it does when artist Crystal C. Mercer pops up on the end of our devices; her vibe takes hold from miles away before the camera reveals her relaxing in her space, which is adorned with her own creative jewelry, art and clothing. You can almost smell the shea butter when she throws her head back to laugh; it’s a divine treat. A slight gesture with her hand takes your eyes to a handmade tapestry behind her, which happens to be to be a gift to be passed to her nieces and the inspiration for her upcoming children’s book From Cotton to Silk: The Magic of Black Hair. We are in the presence of royalty, please bow for the Queen of Southwest Little Rock where the block stays hot and she floats among the flames, exposing its beauty and opulence wherever she chooses to land.

Mercer—textile designer, actor, activist, poet, published author, playwright, business owner and world-traveling auntie—created a gift in From Cotton to Silk: The Magic of Black Hair that pays homage to a lifetime of being deliciously Black from head to toe and is readable for both beginners and seasoned readers. This literary masterpiece, designed with her nieces in mind, is a must-read for anyone with natural hair, who loves someone with natural hair, or who wants to enjoy a glimpse inside of a cultural evolution shaped through divine strength and persecution. Black is so beautiful, and From Cotton to Silk: The Magic of Black Hair embodies this.

Mercer spent nearly 500 hours hand-stitching the authentic cloth artwork that accompanies the book’s text: a sweet poem written as a reminder that we are beautiful in all of our curly-coily glory.

The book began as an idea in Ghana, where Mercer had

10 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

accepted a life-changing opportunity as the artist-in-residence for The Clinton School of Public Service. The rich and familiar history displayed proudly throughout the country gifted her a freedom she’d never experienced before. Her eyes take on a faraway gaze as she recounts the unimaginable opulence and beauty of her experiences in Africa.

“I felt like I could exist without question.”

While there, she remained in close contact with her nieces in New York via email and video chat.

“I really missed my nieces and I don't want them to grow up without me. I don't want them to feel like I wasn't there for them, so I'm always writing poems or stories. I want them to always remember what it’s like to feel free in their own skin.” While she lived in Ghana and experienced all that is Wakanda Forever, Mercer composed a poem she wished she had been able to read as a child. Her nieces loved the piece, which featured them and Mercer’s late grandmother and includes an essential tutorial on caring for and styling natural hair.

After returning stateside, Mercer connected with a representative of Et Alia Press who believed in her vision, transforming Mercer’s poem into a book filled with Mercer’s original artwork, which she intends to gift to her nieces as an heirloom.

Digital magic will allow us the pleasure of sharing this labor of love; signed copies are currently available for preorder, and the book will be released on March 20 to celebrate her grandmother’s birth.

Preorder From Cotton to Silk: The Magic of Black Hair at the Et Alia Press website. You can also go to Mercer’s personal website to get your hands on her previous book called A Love Story Waiting to Happen, which is meant for an older audience. How blessed are we to see the book we wished we’d had as little kids become part of history for our future Kings and Queens? Beyond measure.

PRE-ORDER / ETALIAPRESS.COM

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 11

Stripped bare How many would you estimate have been published prior?

Probably about half.

What are some notable journals some of these stories appeared in?

Elle Nash’s raw, unrelenting tales found in her short story collection, Nudes, leaves its mark on the reader.

INTERVIEW / KODY FORD Elle Nash is releasing her first short story collection, Nudes, this spring by Short Flight/Long Drive Books. Its raw contents illustrate Nash’s goal to be self-aware and self-indulgent—as she says, what is more self-indulgent than a nude? In 2018, Nash released her debut novel Animals Eat Each Other with Dzanc Books. A visceral and, at times, erotic look at obsession and sexuality, the book tells the story of a young bisexual woman in Colorado who enters into a relationship with a polyamorous couple. A darker take on a coming of age story, Animals was featured in the 2018 June Reading Room of O, The Oprah Magazine and hailed by Publishers Weekly as a “complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire.” Elle’s short stories and essays appear in Guernica, The Nervous Breakdown, Literary Hub, The Fanzine, Volume 1 Brooklyn, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp. She also teaches a fiction workshop called Textures. We talked with Nash about her new collection, writing and teaching via Discord.

How long has this collection been in the works?

I started pulling together stories right after my first novel came out, just to see what I had. I'd written my chapbook, AVOKA, inspired by some early experiences of my first couple months living in Northwest Arkansas, actually. So I expanded and rewrote a lot of those stories, and then added more in, spent the next few years working on others, reworking old ones I'd never felt satisfied with. Some of the stories go back to my first published pieces, back in 2014 or so.

12 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

Guernica is probably the most notable one!

So the structure of this book is broken down into types of porn. What inspired this?

When I first envisioned this collection, I felt inspired by Kim Kardashian West's book Selfish. It's literally just a book of selfies.

I love the interplay of giving an audience what they want and also pissing them off at the same time. It's apparent in the title—Selfish—that she, as the author of it, is fully aware of what people think of this collection, its vapidity. And yet she knows people will still pick up the book.

On a surface level it looks superficial, but because it gets people talking, it's really not superficial at all. It's begging a question. I appreciate that kind of attitude.

When I imagined Nudes, that was how I felt. My work has been critiqued as selfindulgent, with an erotic flair. It's been rejected on the grounds of featuring too much teenage drug use or sex. And so I just thought, run in that direction. I wanted to play on themes of obscenity (where obscenity/pornography is defined as content with nothing to give society except titillation). I picked categories I either liked or that I thought would be funny, and tried to fit each of the stories in there. I wanted it to be self-aware and self-indulgent, like, what is more self-indulgent than a nude?

You mentioned that people have said you're self-indulgent. I think writing in first person opens anyone up to that to a point. Why's your story so important?

One thing we've noticed about your work and can't think of the best way to describe it, is that there's a detachment to it in a way. It’s like being on too many antidepressants and you're seeing life happening and you're a part of the action, but it kinda feels like you're an observer. Does this make any sense?

Yes. I always want to write my characters with as little judgment as possible. I refrain from spoon-feeding readers and have very little to say about morality in my art.

I want the reader to make those decisions for themselves. Especially in first person.

It's something I hear people comment on a lot in my work, that the characters are detached—whether for good or ill. On the good side of it, I've heard people say all kinds of things—they mirror themselves into the characters, which I think is wonderful.

On the bad side of it, readers who expect a lot, they tend to feel dissatisfied.

How did you get into writing exactly?

I don't remember really when it started. I began journaling online, for example, as early as 13 years old […] in Livejournal days.

I would write poetry and read poetry of girls my age, and there was even like, a kind of webring (does anyone remember those?) of online poetry journals I used to be a part of. Like in the days of guest books, when you could still customize your sites with your own HTML, that kind of thing.

And every day after school I'd come home and write a poem. I'd journal my life, too, as a way to just get it off my chest. I took creative writing classes in high school, and my parents convinced me to follow a career path that made money. So I went into journalism, thinking that would be the way I could do both. I didn't start taking fiction writing seriously until years later, years after college, when I was just really unsatisfied with where I was at in my life. I wanted to learn how to do it—how to stop writing so journalistically, and make art. That was kind of a pathway back to my young creative self.

Were there any books or writers that served as a catalyst to make you want to do that?

The first author that really made me want to write was Chuck Palahniuk. His early work (Diary, for example) still, to me, has a kind of gritty wildness to it that I'll always admire.

And Invisible Monsters has so much good pain in it. That was how I found out about Tom Spanbauer. I wanted to know how Chuck learned to write, too, and that was where I learned about Tom's Dangerous Writing workshop in Portland. Tom's work is more than devastating. I remember

sobbing through the last 40 pages of his last novel, I Loved You More. They both embodied this kind of shameless attitude toward writing that for my younger self, really needed to embrace in order to be successful. I needed to learn how to run into the fire. Tom specifically taught me that.

And I find that writers I gravitate toward now, tend to be the ones that embody that spirit, too.

I need to know what's at stake, in a work. I want the work to feel real, like there's a real person ready to lose something by sharing their story. Even if there is no real person there because it's a trick of the author—an effigy. A tulpa. That's what inspires me, I guess.

What other important lessons did Tom teach you?

Balance. How to unpack the details of a work. And how it's the details, the visceralness, of the moment, that actually brings a reader to their knees. It's not metaphor, usually, that does its trick. It's the way a moment is created inside the mind, the weight of it, which is being manipulated by very specific detail, that does it. Removing vagaries, rooting out laziness. That all contributes to a piece.

At what point did you decide to start teaching?

I had the director of classes at LitReactor reach out to me to teach a class when [Animals Eat Each Other] came out, and I have a hard time saying no to opportunities. I figured it would be a fun and unique challenge. So I said yes and put together a class on metaphor, and did a bunch of research, basically teaching myself, grad level ideas on what metaphor was and why it's used and why it works and what doesn't work.

After a while, though, I wanted to break off on my own. I wanted to make something that felt more conversational than a class, so I started Textures in 2020. I feel like I learn as much as my students do.

What have been some challenges you've overcome while developing these classes?

I've had to figure out how to say out loud what I already know to be true in my head.

Like, I can read something, and get a feeling for when something about it isn't working. But in the workshop I then have to articulate why and offer solutions. It's not enough to just say "this isn't working." In

order to understand, and to improve, you have to go deeper in your head and be like, "OK, but why isn't it working?"

You mentioned that you learn as much as your students do. Any examples?

I just believe that the process of editing others' work teaches you a lot about your own work. What your tastes are, why you hate or love something, how to avoid pitfalls that you see in others' work helps you see it better in your own. And so it's like a synergistic process. You just learn a lot about yourself.

How do you select different topics to lecture on each month?

I try to teach some level of a basic element— plot, dialogue, character, etc.—then I pair it with a reading. And with the reading, I try to go beyond the basic element, as well, since there are just so many ways one can talk elements of fiction in that sense.

When I first envisioned this collection, I felt inspired

by Kim Kardashian West's book Selfish. It's literally just a book of selfies. I love the interplay of giving an audience what they want and also pissing them off at the same time.

What are some of the main differences you've found between writing a novel compared to a short story?

Short stories have a better pay off sometimes because they take less time to write and publish. Also, I think in a short story, there's less room for error. If you start a thread and don't pick it up again, people are going to notice that a lot more than in a novel. Every scene needs to be there for a reason.

an entire piece simply because it's longer.

What are some ways you maintain consistency with your writing output?

I maintain output a couple of ways. The first is realizing that output has to build momentum. So for example you can't just get up one day and run a marathon. You kind of have to work your way up to it. Once you build the momentum (say, you get used to getting up and writing for an hour or two every day), you have to maintain discipline.

Discipline requires being adaptable, though. If something is too rigid, it will break. So you have to learn to be flexible with your schedule. If, for example, there's a day that you can't or don't write, or you don't meet your time/word goal, you can't be too hard on yourself about it or those negative feelings will impede your ability to keep going. It'll create a shame spiral.

You just have to let it go and resolve to do it again the next day. And you have to keep going with that mindset, every day, for as long as you want to maintain that momentum.

What are you working on now?

After I finished two full lengths and a novella last year, I am taking a break. I have been writing a bit of poetry here and there. But for now I'm just reading. Trying to rest my mind.

Did you find you became more productive after moving to Colorado?

Not necessarily! I definitely became more productive after having a kid though.

Because time became so precious, I tried really hard not to waste it. Maybe though writing became a bit of an escape during the pandemic. // ELLENASH.NET // TWITTER @SADEROTICA

Do you feel you can explore similar topics and emotions better in one form or the other?

That's really hard to say. I think you can be explosive with feeling in either form—it kind of depends more on how it's being written.

Like, the voice of it. Though in a novel it is more of a challenge to carry voice through

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 13

Experience the passion and power of art and craft Helping artists and craftspeople share their legacy of skill and knowledge with the next generation since 1998

KEEP THE LOCAL FLAVOR FLOWING. Fossil Cove Brewing Support Fayetteville Ale Trail breweries.

14 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

BLACKSMITHING WELDING WOODWORKING WOODTURNING CLAY PAINTING DRAWING JEWELRY PHOTOGRAPHY GLASS TEXTILES SPECIAL MEDIA ONLINE WORKSHOPS And More!

15751 Highway 62 W Eureka Springs, AR 72632 (479) 253-5384

www.essa-art.org

Featuring the work of Featuring fine art by

MICHAEL WARRICK BRAD CUSHMAN Little Rock, Arkansas 1501 South Main Street, Suite H 501.664.0030 // 501.454.6969

Little Rock, Arkansas 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.

Miami, Florida 501.664.0030 305.528.4971 Miami, Florida 305.528.4971

www.boswellmourot.com www.boswellmourot.com

“His Memory” by Michael Warrick, bronze + wood, 20” x 30” “Rivercrest I (Looking Northwest)” WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 15

Waiting for the Muse When creativity can strike at any moment, how do you capture it? According to Warren Criswell, you build an easel on your steering wheel.

WORDS / SUMMER EL-SHAHAWY PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE ARTIST Warren Criswell has been in the art community since he was a young child and has been told he could draw even before he could walk. Though he started his art career in West Palm Beach, Florida, he left the art world in pursuit of writing only to find himself returning to art in Arkansas in 1976.

“Florida was being ruined by tourists and the sugar industry, so in 1972 I quit my job as a land surveyor, sold our home and we left,” Criswell said. “We transformed a bus into a camper which we named Toad, where I spent five years on the road, trying to write the great American novel.”

While on the road, Criswell built an easel on the steering wheel of the bus and taught himself watercolor. After settling in Arkansas in 1976, Criswell began selling those watercolors at what is now Cantrell Gallery in Little Rock and, soon after, quit his day job to become a full-time artist.

Criswell describes his passion to create as a necessity.

“My creativity is like an addiction or an innate urge that I call the muse,” Criswell said, “but my inspiration for a particular work can come from anywhere, I never know where, which is why I call it an ambush. I am ambushed by images.”

In his art, Criswell said his most important objective is conveying the truth, which he accomplishes by staying true to the images and portraying them authentically. He said while all themes are important to him, his work usually addresses opposing ideas.

16 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

“I think there is a dichotomy in my work,” Criswell said, “between our physical or emotional desires and our intellectual knowledge of our mortality, and between our creativity and our destructivity.”

While Criswell is primarily an oil painter, he also loves drawing, watercolor, printmaking, sculpture, and animation.

“I like to move around, exploring new means of expression,” Criswell said. “My work has always depended on discoveries, of both subjects and media. I approach each painting with fear and trembling, pretending it’s my first and hoping it’s not my last.”

Over the years, Criswell’s talents have not gone unrecognized. He has received 19 awards in his career as an artist, most recently the Arkansas Governor’s Individual Artist Award for the spring of 2021 for his piece, “Devices.” He said he is honored and grateful for this and all the awards he has received throughout his life.

Regarding the future, Criswell is in a state of waiting. In August 2018, Criswell suffered a stroke that rendered his left arm and hand useless.

“I am, or was, left-handed,” Criswell said. “And worse than that, the muse has apparently dumped me or is lost in my scrambled neurons. But I am still hoping to recover, doing therapy at home every day, trying to learn to draw and paint with my right hand, and hoping my creativity will come back.”

As far as recovery goes, Criswell is both optimistic and grateful, and he remains a stellar creator.

He said right now, in his state of waiting, he can picture what waiting will look like in an art form, though he is working up the nerve to attempt it.

“I have a canvas on my easel right now and sort of an image in my head of me on my cane, waiting for a sunset, my left hand and the muse, and a crow as usual waiting for me to die. It's called Waiting,” Criswell said.

“But let me drop the poor, ‘poor pitiful me’ rant, to say that I am thankful to be alive, thanks to the genius doctor at UAMS who removed the clot from my brain, and to my loving wife and primary caregiver, Janet.” / WARRENCRISWELL.COM

MIRRORED THROUGH ART Oluwatobi Adewumi reflects upon the human experience to inform his art and spark powerful conversations.

WORDS / SUMMER EL-SHAHAWY PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE ARTIST Oluwatobi Adewumi’s contemporary art is a beautiful and accessible avenue to discuss current events in American society. Originally hailing from the capital city of Oyo State, Nigeria, Adewumi’s perspective is uniquely positioned in an almost bird’s-eye view, allowing him to showcase facets of cultural and social issues that might have otherwise gone unseen in his art.

The majority of Adewumi’s artwork focuses on history, culture and voice, particularly those of Black American and African communities.

“As an immigrant, when you come to the US, ‘you’re Black’ becomes a discussion. It’s a real topic and you get tagged as that,” Adewumi said.

“It’s tough being an immigrant and being a Black man; you start to see the division in race and how people relate. As you begin to question those things and discuss it, it becomes too controversial and delicate to touch.”

Adewumi said that these social issues run deeply, and from police brutality to topics like “Black-on-Black crime,” his art is an attempt to pave the way to address subjects that people often don’t want to talk about.

“To me, actions play a role in changing the world. As a Black man, I can’t change the experience of racism—I can only mirror through my art what is taking place,” Adewumi said. “It reflects what is around and my art adapts itself to the context.”

Adewumi said his next goal is to receive a grant to create a body of work on simply being human. While he acknowledges the presence of cultural differences, he said he wants to start from a place that makes a simple statement: we’re all human.

“I did a piece about the Black Lives Matter protests,” Adewumi said. “America is great, and that’s why people want to come here, but it’s not perfect—nowhere is perfect, it’s just being covered up.”

To make his pieces Adewumi often uses charcoal, which he is both comfortable and quick with, but he said his art itself chooses the medium.

“I allow the art to choose the medium,” Adewumi said. “The new body of work I’m working on now is mixed media and it will be paint and color and charcoal. I pick what suits the timeframe, subject, and topic I want to talk about.”

As a self-taught artist, Adewumi said he’s had to prove himself to the art world again and again. In 2020, Adewumi was one of two artists to win the Derwent People’s Choice Award in London for his piece, Doublesided.

The hyper-realistic depiction of a face, revealed in fragmented glimpses between two intersecting silhouettes divided by columns of blank space, is commentary on Adewumi’s belief that each person has a story to tell.

“Winning that was great,” Adewumi said. “As a self-taught artist, the world is a funny place, and you’re not going to get a free pass. It was huge because you’re in another country and people can still appreciate what you create.”

In the future, Adewumi plans to continue breaking barriers and gaining exposure. Two of his dream exhibition spaces are Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art. He hopes that the opportunity to showcase his art on that level would help to communicate his message on a larger scale.

“Ultimately, the point of making art is to talk about your experiences, and there’s no one who can take that away from you: they’re yours,” Adewumi said. “As an immigrant and an outsider, I’m going to keep talking about my experience as a Black man, and there’s no better way to do that than through art.”

IG / @OTOBIART

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 17

ARKANSAS FOOD HALL OF FAME CELEBRATES

THE FLAVORS OF THE STATE WORDS / ANDREW VOGLER DIVISION OF ARKANSAS HERITAGE

of the Continental Cuisine Partnership have been the winners of this honor.

How do you measure the authenticity of a community?

Though there are several ways to do so, in Arkansas a highly accurate cultural barometer certainly has to be one’s stomach. In the universal custom of hospitality, if you wanted to give an outta towner a thorough representation of your community, you’re probably going to take them to your favorite restaurant - a place that has great food paired with fond memories.

• Food-Themed Event – This award honors a community food-themed event or festival that makes our state a great place to live and visit. Food festivals that have won are the Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival, International Greek Food Festival, Hope Watermelon Festival, Gillett Coon Supper and Cave City Watermelon Festival.

In essence, this is what the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame (AFHOF) is all about - a program created by Arkansas Heritage that honors Arkansas’s culinary legacy and highlights the state’s legendary restaurants, food festivals, and all the people who make it all possible. Stacy Hurst, Secretary of the Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism, put this program together in 2015 as a way to engage the state in a conversation about food as heritage: the intersection of history and culture.

In celebration of everything Arkansas food, each year the program presents awards in five categories: • Food Hall of Fame – This award recognizes those long-standing restaurants that have become legendary attractions in Arkansas. With representation across the state and food spectrum, winners have included renowned restaurants such as Jones Bar-BQue, Lassis Inn, Cattleman’s Steak House, Monte Ne Chicken, Murry’s Restaurant and Star of India.

• Proprietor of the Year – This award honors a chef, cook and/or restaurant owner in Arkansas who has made significant achievements in the food industry. Matt McClure, Scott McGehee, Loretta Tacker, Mary Beth Ringgold and the members

18 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

• Gone But Not Forgotten – Remembers the collective culinary legacy of a once-and-always influential Arkansas restaurant that has since ceased operations. Restaurants include Cotham’s Mercantile, Klappenbach Bakery, Shadden’s BBQ and Roy Fisher’s Steak House.

• People’s Choice – Identifies the public’s favorite. This award is truly in the hands of Arkansans. The restaurant or food truck that receives the highest number of votes wins.

The restaurants that have represented the people so far have included The Grotto, JJ’s Lakeside Cafe, Honey Pies Bakery, The Ohio Club, and most recently Bistro Bar & Grill.

The process to be inducted into the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame kicks off each October when Arkansas Heritage invites the public to submit nominations. Once the nomination period closes, the AFHOF committee, made up of some of the state’s most knowledgeable foodies, food lovers and food historians, narrow down finalists, from which winners will then be chosen. The winners and finalists are then honored at an induction ceremony hosted in February.

The announcement also serves as an opportunity for members from all areas of the state’s food

community to come together and celebrate the Great State of the Plate.

The fifth year of the program has been a memorable one, for the best and most difficult reasons at the same time. The pandemic has stretched Arkansas’s food community to its limit. Restaurants have been operating under trying conditions and, sadly, many of these establishments have closed their doors.

Food festivals have been unable to fully come together and celebrate their yearly events.

Proprietors are facing real challenges and sacrifices.

“Each year we take pride in honoring some of the incredible restaurants and industry stakeholders within our state, but something felt extra special this year,” said Secretary Hurst of the 2021 program.

However, it’s certainly not a lost year. For one thing, Arkansans from across the state have reached deep and shown their beloved food institutions. Further, the food community has shown remarkable leadership, creativity and perseverance through a period when uncertainty at times seemed to be the only constant.

Last month, through a virtual ceremony, the fifth class was inducted into the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame. Though the food community wasn’t able to come together physically, people throughout the state celebrated at home, passionately rooting for their beloved food institutions. Our food heritage in Arkansas is certainly something to be honored, supported and continued and the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame is a special place to do just that.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF DEPT. OF ARKANSAS HERITAGE

Jones Bar-B-Q has been an Arkansas staple for over a century, and earned a James Beard Award along the way. Chef Case Dighero recollects moments of attempted connection with James “Mr. Harold” Jones over a famed barbecue sandwich.

WORDS / CASE DIGHERO PHOTOS COURTESY / ARKANSAS DEPT. OF PARKS, HERITAGE AND TOURISM “I ain’t doing no more interviews,” said the deep, somber voice on the other end of the phone.

I hesitated briefly, not wanting to hear a click before I could aptly respond; but my weak reply only helped the conversation devolve as I feebly pleaded, “Sir, I would be happy to come see you, and I won’t take more than a few minutes of your time.”

JONES BAR-B-Q IS SOUTHERN ROYALTY

The line was filled with loud clanking, and someone was murmuring in the background beneath the same strong voice cutting me down to size. “Nah, I ain’t doing no more interviews,” followed by more clanks, murmurs, and then finally: CLICK. Disappointed in myself, I put my phone down, sighed heavily, then cleared my entire calendar for the next day so I could drive five hours across the state to visit one of the oldest and most revered Black-owned restaurants in the United States: Jones BarB-Q Diner in Marianna. It had been a while since I had last taken a solo road trip, and the nearly 600-mile journey to the Delta would prove to be more than just another work assignment. Rather, it would be an exercise in humility and heritage.

Jones Bar-B-Q is southern royalty, if there ever were such a thing. Established in 1915, it is alleged to be the longest running Black-owned restaurant in the country; staying power that not only merits its true grit reputation across the state, but has also garnered national recognition when it won the America’s Classics award from the James Beard Foundation nearly 10 years ago. I was excited, as this would be my third attempt at securing Jones Bar-B-Q; on earlier stops while en route to other destinations I had arrived too late to eat, because when the barbecue runs out, the store closes. Culinary karma had dictated my previous failures, but this trip was pure of heart, no distractions, motivated simply by a conversation with the owner (known as “Mr. Harold” to the townsfolk) and a chopped pork sandwich.

I left Fayetteville before dawn, knowing the doors opened at 7 a.m. and that I needed to arrive at a sensible hour to ensure an order. The highway spilled out in front of my headlights and I contemplated my strategy

20 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

for securing an interview. Reverence was the call, unadulterated respect from a student of food. Mr Harold would have to give me five minutes because he would understand and feel the connection. I manifested the conversation, and before I made it to the foggy outskirts of Marianna, I hoped—no, I believed—that we would become friends, collaborators, and ultimately contemporaries of Arkansas food and history. In my mind, the story unfolded beautifully as my empty stomach grumbled on my approach to the order window.

The line moved quickly. The smell of fires stacked with rich hickory and oak was heavy in the air, and I placed my order for the only thing on the menu: chopped pork barbeque, either by the pound or as a sandwich wrapped in a swathe of foil.

I found a place to sit inside, and felt a deep camaraderie with the six other people eating barbecue sandwiches before 10 a.m. The tender pork rested between two pieces of soft Wonder bread, sopping with a vinegary, pepper-laden sauce and coleslaw. I ate in complete silence, slowly, giving reverence to Mr. Harold in the best way I knew how, by eating his iconic chopped pork that had been smoked for nearly ten hours, then stewed in his secret barbecue sauce until it hit the bread and foil.

I got up and ordered another sandwich, and our eyes met through the small order window. I nodded, and he nodded back, and that was all I needed. I knew before I was handed the sandwich I wasn’t going to ask for an interview; I wasn’t going to bother him, we weren't going to become collaborators, contemporaries, or even acquaintances, because some things are simply best left undone and unsaid. And for some, true reverence consists of a quiet head nod.

Sadly, just two days after my trip, Jones Bar-B-Q Diner suffered a devastating fire that destroyed nearly 70 percent of the building. No one was hurt, but at press the fate of the country’s oldest Black-owned restaurant is still uncertain.

WORDS / DWAIN HEBDA

A

rkansas’s recording studios have evolved from a handful of traditional record labels into an eclectic mix that also includes take-all-comers recording companies and boutique outfits that, thanks to technology, are nimbler than ever before. And, thanks to the cancellation of many live shows in 2020, demand is up for all of them.

“A lot of the bands that I know have been writing and recording constantly for the last year,” said Travis McElroy, owner of Thick Syrup Records in Little Rock. “Between COVID and Trump, they had a lot to write about. I think we’ll see a lot of good stuff coming out.”

“Everybody is worried because so many of the venues they play are out of business now.

They’re really worried about even being able to book a tour. So, everybody that I know of has been recording.”

McElroy, who launched Thick Syrup in 2006, said the extra demand for recording has allowed him to stay focused on musical areas he’s into, and therefore has a better feel for. He said while the business model has changed dramatically over the years, he’s content to stay where his heart lies, musically.

“Most of the stuff that I do anymore, it’s either stuff I grew up listening to or it’s if I don’t really care if I sell anything,” he said.

“To really sell any records, they have to either be touring or they would have to already be known, honestly. I don’t hardly sell any music locally. My sales are mainly overseas or New York, New Jersey, California. I’ve never had strong sales, whatsoever, in Arkansas.”

and get something good; to get something good for a little money, now that’s cool.”

Other recording studios in Arkansas have survived thanks to a strong business niche other than supporting a label with its requisite promotional costs and distribution headaches.

“The music business is completely jacked.

There is no business. There’s no artists or trust. There’s no way to sell products,” said Darren Crisp, who’s owned Crisp Recording Studios in Fayetteville since 1999. “It’s all streamed and we know what the streaming has done to the artists. That’s a mess, that part of it.”

“But there’s always going to be music and there’s always going to be people hungry to express through the platform. I value recording in the classic sense of preserving history and making memories for people and their art and the wonderful time that they’re in. I love capturing that so 20 years from now, they can look back and go, ‘Man, I was doing some cool stuff back then.’”

Crisp relocated to Northwest Arkansas in 1999 from Colorado where he’d run a studio for 15 years. Since then, he’s steadily built a business that helps bring clients’ passion projects to life.

“I still have the idealistic outlook and am just a crazy nutjob dreamer, but as a businessman I want people to get something very good for as little money as possible,” he said. “It’s easy to spend a ton of money

If Crisp Recording Studios follows the most traditional business model and Thick Syrup represents the classic label business, then Color Code Recording gives a glimpse of the radical future, one not bound to heavy overhead and hardwired brick-and-mortar locations.

Cody Nielsen, who founded Color Code in 2014, said his boutique business model not only gives him more freedom as he records other artists, it also gives the artists themselves more control and input to the finished product.

"There are so many artists that you’ll find in the production notes of a nice, wellproduced record,” he said. “They’ll say, ‘I just recorded this at my drummer’s house and he did all the production. And then, we sent it off somewhere else to get a little more polished or whatever.’ Going forward, that’s definitely going to become the new norm.”

Nielsen, who is also a performing musician, said that while there will always be a place for big studios, there are just as many opportunities for his kind of operation thanks to advancements in technology.

"It really never has been easier to record, whether it be another band or yourself. It’s just going to get easier and easier,” he said.

“I’m so excited about where we’re going to be at with technology in 10 to20 years, especially as far as production goes and making music. It’s going to be a wild world.

Quite frankly, I’m excited that I’m going to be a part of it.”

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 21

COULD TALK

IF WALLS COULD TALK

IF WALLS

Legendary venues aren’t backing down to COVID-19. History won’t allow it.

WORDS / SOPHIA ORDAZ PHOTOS / FIRST HAND FAN

GEORGE’S MAJESTIC LOUNGE IIf the walls of George’s Majestic Lounge could talk, they would relay almost a century of history. As Arkansas’s oldest and longest-running live music venue, George’s was one of the first nightlife establishments to integrate in Arkansas and the first bar to broadcast color TV. Now, alongside the many beloved legacy venues in our state, George’s is braving a global pandemic in eager anticipation for a nearing COVID-free future.

“Generations have come to George’s the past 94 years for generally the same reason: to have that social interaction and escape from reality for a few hours,” says Brian Crowne, owner and talent buyer at George’s. “Live music and good times make memories for a lifetime and 22 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

George’s has been blessed to be a place that facilitates good memories. When folks and generations can have great memories of George’s in their 20s, 30s, 40s, [through] ’80s, they feel a sense of pride and ownership themselves.”

George’s closed its doors to concertgoers March 13, a week before the state mandated that all bars, restaurants and live venues cease in-person operations.

The past year’s closures have decimated the live music industry, depriving musicians from a steady source of income, leaving tour crew members unemployed and threatening the livelihood of independent music venues worldwide. A typical year at George’s consists of at least 250 shows—Crowne had to cancel or postpone hundreds in 2020.

“We went from a positive revenue business to a 100% expense business with no revenue,” Crowne says of George’s closure last March. “I knew

immediately we would be the first to close and the last to reopen at any sort of capacity. The industry of gathering people shut down globally.”

During the five months George’s closed, Crowne and his wife and business partner, Day, planned how the Dickson Street mainstay might serve patrons and musicians in the safest way possible. In preparation for their reopening last August, they had UV air purifiers installed in the air conditioning units, placed hand sanitizer stations throughout the venue and built an outdoor stage. Patrons must wear face masks at all times and are prohibited from being near the stage or dancing, per state mandate. Though the venue is operating at 20 percent capacity and attendance can be hit or miss, Crowne is hopeful for George’s future and trusts that interest in live music post-pandemic will be overwhelming.

“There is definitely a light at the end

of the tunnel now. I hadn’t seen one in a long time. I’m somewhat optimistic that late summer or fall will start to feel a little more normal,” Crowne says. “I think people are starving for live music in volume and they will come back strong once we have the bands they want to see booked. We are social creatures and gathering together for live music is important to folks and important for our mental health.”

Patrons can look forward to George’s Majestic Lounge resuming outdoor concerts with the arrival of spring weather. In the meantime, look to George’s for a range of socially distanced entertainment, including Houston honkytonkers, the Chad Cooke Band; ’90s alt-rock cover band, The Mixtapes; and the Arkansas Bluegrass Bash in June.

STICKYZ

With its stained glass windows, painting-adorned interior and cavernous back room, Stickyz Rock’n’Roll Chicken Shack has been a centerpiece of Little Rock’s River Market District for over two decades. The eclectic locale’s tuckedaway seating is perfect for catching up with friends over chicken sandwiches and fried okra before heading to the adjoining performance hall to enjoy local and out-of-state live music. Though the pandemic has placed restaurants and bars under an unprecedented amount of strain, Stickyz is still going strong thanks to community support.

“We felt [the pandemic] immediately,” says Chris King, owner, operator and talent buyer at Stickyz. “Our numbers

plummeted by about 85 percent beginning the week of March 16, and if it wasn’t for the love and support we received from our regulars and members of our community I don’t know if we would’ve made it through the first two months.”

At the onset of the pandemic, Stickyz made the switch to curbside service, delivering more to-go orders than ever before in the restaurant’s history. During the second phase of Arkansas’s reopening, Stickyz rearranged their seating along social distancing guidelines, put up hand sanitizer stations and began using disposable menus. In July, concerts resumed in Stickyz’s open patio space, and shows have now returned to the indoor stage with a cap on the number of attendees.

“I think a lot of people have great memories of the shows we’ve produced [at Stickyz],” King says. “We have always tried to be a place that folks can come to for national and regional touring artists as well as a variety of talented local bands and musicians. We hope to make people feel like they don’t have to travel to neighboring cities in order to see big-time touring artists.”

With vaccine distribution unfolding across the nation, King is optimistic about Stickyz’s future. For 21 years, Stickyz has provided Arkansans their Southern food fix and a curated selection of live music, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. / GEORGESMAJESTICLOUNGE.COM / STICKYZ.COM

GEORGE’S MAJESTIC LOUNGE

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 23

A EW THOMPSON STARTED THIRTY YEARS AGO, MATTH IS IT Y, DA TO KE. FLU CALLED ZINE WITH TWO FRIENDS G. ON STR ING STILL GO WORDS / KODY FORD PHOTOS COURTESY / FLUKE FANZINE Zine culture goes back decades, if not centuries. One could argue that Thomas Payne’s Common Sense was an early example of zine. In the 20th century, they grew out of early sci-fi fandom and eventually spread to topics like feminism, horror stories, and, most notably, music. Early music zines like Crawdaddy! and Mojo Navigator Rock and Roll News sprang up in California. Punk rock’s DIY aesthetic was a perfect fit for zines. British fanzines like Sniffin’ Glue and Bondage spread the word to the world of what was happening in the UK punk scene. Throughout the 1980s, zines spread across other genres such as hardcore and even mainstream rock with multiple Bruce Springsteen fanzines popping up. So, as Little Rock’s DIY and music scene grew during the ’80s and early ’90s, the emergence of zines was a natural progression of the cultural development happening.

“John was everywhere––in the streets, at the shows, at the punk houses, copy shops, traveling, and documenting it all[…]There were a lot of great Little Rock zines in the early '90s and a lot of not so great ones, too. That didn't really matter, though. It was something to create and engage your friends with.”

Fluke has brought many memories for Thompson over the years.

The highlight has been “being able to connect with people I admire and am inspired by.” He befriended musician Mike Watt, Arkansas artist buZ blurr, and musician and zine creator Aaron Cometbus. He met Arkansas expatriate musicians like Tav Falco and Gary Floyd. He handed copies of the magazine to rock legends Iggy Pop and Keith Morris. Last year, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore even ordered several issues. These, of course, are not the only reasons he has kept the zine going for all these years.

LETTERS TO FRIENDS + STRANGERS

One such zine was Fluke. Created by Steve Schmidt, Jason White and Matthew Thompson in North Little Rock. Its origin was a bit serendipitous according to Thompson. Schmidt had graduated high school and was living with his mom and working at TCBY Frozen Yogurt in Lakewood. A homeless man would come in and write the numbers one through twenty-seven on a piece of paper, continuously. At the time, Schmidt figured the man was teaching himself to count, which inspired Schmidt to take action in his own life. He soon began hosting a punk rock radio show on KABF, joined the band Chino Horde and started a fanzine.

In the summer of 1991, the trio launched Fluke 1. Schmidt interviewed touring bands Fugazi and Plaid Retina, who performed at what is now Vino’s on 7th in Chester in Little Rock.

White interviewed Tim Lamb, who published a Little Rock fanzine called Lighten Up in the ’80s. Thompson was taking a writing course at UALR and one of his assignments was to write a letter to the editor of the Arkansas Gazette. His letter addressed the correlation between violence on television and society. It was printed in the paper so he included that in the first issue, as well as other writings, photography and record reviews. Their friend Colin Brooks worked at Kinko’s on JFK and McCain in North Little Rock and he assisted them with printing the first two issues.

Growing up, Thompson says zines were crucial to the community. ““I think zines touch people on an intimate level because it is a personal piece of literature and art and people feel connected to that.” He added, “They played a vital role in the scene. Fanzines were the glue that held it all together. They offered information, opinions, insight, journalism, art and dialogue between friends.

By 1992, there was an influx of local zines in Little Rock. It seemed like everyone and their dog did a zine.”

For Thompson, zines gave him a way to contribute to the scene as a creator. He took what he learned in high school journalism classes and applied to Fluke. He believes the punk rock bible Maximumrocknroll—which began in the Bay Area in 1982—and Ahoalton—a zine on punk rock and Native American culture

by Little Rock native Mark Dober—were among the first zines he ever encountered. He would read reviews of other zines in the back pages of Maximumrocknroll and order them. Some of Thompson’s favorite Little Rock zines of the late Eighties/Nineties include Jeremy Brasher's Risk, which touched on train-hopping; Theo Witsell’s Spectacle; Jim Thompson's Handout; and Sam Caplan’s Tracks n Macks.

Thompson cites John Pugh's Eyepoke and Get Lost as his absolute favorites of mid '90s Little Rock zines. Thompson said,

purpose in life.”

“It energizes me. People interest me. It’s a fanzine, a zine for fans.

I’m a fan of music, art, writing, photography, ideas. It’s something I am passionate about,” Thompson said. “Fluke connects me to the world. I took two long breaks–– seven and four years––battling addiction and then piecing my life back together. Fluke has given me

Many Fluke contributors have gone on to do big things. Fluke co-founder White has toured the world as Green Day’s guitarist for over 20 years now. Brooks played in Dan Zanes and Friends, whose album Catch That Train! won the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children. buZ blurr’s art has been shown in major art exhibits and museums worldwide, most recently in SFMOMA and Beyond the Streets in Los Angeles. Nate Powell’s 2008 graphic novel Swallow Me Whole won an Ignatz Award and Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel. He also won a National Book Award for his illustration work for the March graphic novel by the late, great Rep. John Lewis.

Powell has collaborated with Fluke for 15 years, but he first became a fan in 1992 when he picked up Fluke #2 along with some other local zines. The DIY movement inspired Powell to collaborate with his friends Mike Lierly and Nathan Wilson to self-publish their own comics. In 2006, Powell and Thompson reconnected when Powell contributed illustrations for the booklet accompanying the documentary, Towncraft, about the Little Rock music scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s That was immediately followed by Powell’s cover art for Fluke #7, and they have been regular collaborators since then, roughly once a year.

Powell cites Fluke and zine culture as having a major influence on his career to come.

“Zines were one of the most accessible forms of self-expression for teenagers in the 1990's underground, and there were at least a dozen zines being published by young people in the Little Rock area,” Powell said. “D.O.A., the dystopian superhero comic we self-published starting in 1992, was made possible by the proof-of-concept established through other kids' zines, and by 1994, I was making more personal zines of my own, eventually folding comics back into the zine content later in the '90s and ultimately arriving at my current mode of full personal and political expression through my comics.”

Fluke also provided a way for people to stay plugged into their hometown scene in the days before social media and widespread Internet use. Cora Crary, a Little Rock native who left for the Pacific Northwest in the early ’90s, used the zine as a means of connection.

“I left Little Rock in the fall of 1990 and other than living in town for a few months in 1992 and 1994 I wasn’t really around, so for me Fluke contributed to my understanding of what was happening in Little Rock,” Crary said. “That said, Fluke came about at a time in the scene where everyone had zines, since especially if you weren’t in a band, a zine was essentially a calling card, as well as an excuse to ask your geeky questions of the creators you followed. Fluke has persisted all these decades and has provided a through line connecting the Little Rock scene that we grew up in with all the new and adjacent projects made or inspired by those in the scene.”

Over the years, production has evolved. Instead of printing and assembling the zine at a copy shop, Thompson now has a printer who prints and collates Fluke. Instead of printing 100 or so copies, he now prints 1,000 or more and sells them in stores around the country and even abroad. He has slowly but surely built up a distribution network across the country by taking the time to develop personal relationships with people and stores.

Some stores have sold Fluke since its inception, but Thompson is always looking for more outlets worldwide to carry the zine.

Last year, he started Fluke Publishing––printing and distributing magazines created by friends.

Powell credits Fluke’s longevity to Thompson’s growth as a creative and a person.

“I think it's essential that zinemakers grow older with their publications, allowing shifts in their own personal interests to coexist with a sense of continuity,” Powell said. “Fluke excels in this by focusing on musicians and artists who have grown and evolved alongside their creations, and Matthew takes care to highlight this in a very open, sincere way.”

Crary sees the zine as an inspiration. She said, “Zines have an intimacy and immediacy to them. Publishing and communications have changed dramatically since the first Fluke was released, but the format remains as relevant as ever [...] Fluke has been a love letter to a scene that taught us all that if you don't see what you're looking for, then maybe it's time you make it yourself.”

In late 2019, Thompson curated the “Fluke Life” art show in North Little Rock. Gen X’ers, Millennials and Gen Z’ers packed into Dedicated Visual Art Studio & Gallery in North Little Rock. Patrons browsed through reprints of back issues and bid on skate decks painted by Arkansas artists like Milkdadd, Olivia Trimble and Michael Shaeffer.

“When I was approached to create a deck, it was a no-brainer,” Shaeffer said. “Fluke has been such a huge part of Central Arkansas culture for as far back as I have lived here. It has always been a zine that would celebrate not only interesting music and art on a national level, but also celebrate cool things happening in the area.”

The skate decks were manufactured about a mile down the road from where the show was held. Paige Hearn, who has made skate decks in Levy since the '80s, provided the boards.

Gallery owner Jose Hernandez helped recruit artists from across the state. The age range of the artists ran the gamut with buZ blurr and Kuhl Brown being the oldest—in their 70s and 80s, respectively—and the youngest was Thompson’s daughter, who was 13 at the time. She was the only artist not from Arkansas, but he made an exception.

Thompson said, “It came together seamlessly, really. Everyone was, pardon the pun, on board to be a part of the show. It was absolutely incredible and overwhelming, the place was packed inside and out for the whole night. It felt like a homecoming of sorts, so many friends I've had for decades showed up, as well as people I'd never met. Jason [White] was in town for the holiday so he showed up, too. It was one of the best nights of my life, honestly. I hope to do another one in November, if things calm down with the virus.”

The future of Fluke looks bright. Thompson plans to continue publishing the zine to grow his audience and will even release a book of his own this year. His love of zines has not wavered even as the magazine enters its 30th year.

“I found Fluke to be a project that propels me.” He added, “I love how the magazine drives itself and I’m just along for the ride. One idea building on another. I enjoy collaborating with others. Once it is created, I love sending it out into the world––through mail order and to shops that sell zines. Secretly, my magazines are actually letters to friends and strangers.”

If fans would like to order copies, please visit www.flukefanzine.com. Send mail to: Matthew Thompson, PO Box 1547, Phoenix, AZ 85001.

IG / @FLUKE_FANZINE

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 25

26 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

PAUL LEOPOULOS PAUL LEOPOULOS

P

aul Leopoulos found a light in the darkness that followed losing his daughter, Thea Kay, in a car accident on Interstate 630 at the end of her junior year of high school. According to Leopoulos, Thea had struggled in school, but her grades dramatically improved after she began taking arts classes— the arts changed her life. After her passing, the family created an arts education nonprofit in her name. Leopoulos left his career in counseling and business behind and went on to run the Thea Foundation full-time until stepping down in 2019 so his son, Nick, could take over. Now 20 years since tragedy struck, the Thea Foundation continues to help young people come into their own through arts programs and scholarships.

They have awarded more than $2.3 million in scholarships to Arkansas students and provided more than $1.5 million in art supplies and creative materials to underfunded schools through their Art Closet program.

How did the Thea Foundation come about?

[Thea] had been a soccer player and hadn't gotten into the arts, but took an art class and a drama class and a competitive speech class and a dance class. And by the end of that year, she went from a struggling student who made C’s and D’s to making all A's and B's. [...] So, with all that has happened, we had to look into what happened in her schoolwork, and why did she make that transformation so quickly that year? And it turned out it was the arts classes that she took. There's about 50 years of research that shows that young people that get engaged in the arts, no matter what level—they don't have to end up being a concert pianist or anything—they get engaged with it and they like it. They end up sort of retooling their left and right brain connections. And they end up doing much better in the cognitive aspect of education. So, when we found that out, we decided we ought to tell Thea’s story about how the arts gave her confidence and how that confidence then transcended her abilities in school. And we need to be advocates for the arts because we realize that the arts are just not celebrated by most principals, superintendents, people that make the decisions on curriculum.

And so we decided to start the Thea Foundation and our mission statement [...] is to advocate the importance of the arts in the development of our youth. So the development word in that mission statement is every aspect of a young person's development. You know, there are social, educational, emotional—all of those are impacted in one way or another when kids get engaged in the arts. They all might not go from hating math and science to making an A in Trig that year and then signing up to take calculus and physics the next year, which happened to Thea, but I mean in her case, that was massive that change.

A lot of kids might not ever still care for math, and that's not what we're saying. We're just saying that there can be a massive transformation in many aspects of a young person's life. And one of those we feel can be better grades, better social environment, better ability with friends and on and on. So, our deal about the arts is total. We were all in on every aspect of trying to make the arts better in schools.

What did you do first?

So, the first thing we did really was establish our visual arts competition.

And that first year we did it only for all of Thea’s friends that were in this advanced art class North Little Rock High School and Thea would have been in that class, and they all still terribly missed her. And so we did it just for the kids in that class. The next year we went statewide and we've been statewide ever since on visual arts scholarship competitions. And it was a struggle. We did a lithograph of Thea’s BB King fingerpainting— you can see that on our website under Thea K. at the top—you can see our art and read her creative writing her entries as well. And so we saw that to a little elementary school for $1,500. A friend of mine happened to work there as principal, and she wanted to give us a boost to get some money, so we took that money and we awarded that for those three scholarships the first year. I guy from the Democrat-Gazette, volunteered his time and took large format photos of her art in case we wanted to do more lithographs and people just started jumping online because they heard the Thea story. So, you know, for a couple of years, we were just trying to raise money and do our scholarship competitions.

How did you continue to grow as a foundation?

After a few years, I spoke to Bob Hupp at The Rep about doing a performing arts scholarship. And so he gave me a lot of advice on that and actually gave me an idea if I'd check with colleges and the state,

they might actually match our scholarships that we give kids. Well, turns out we've awarded about $2.5 million in scholarships since 2002, and about two thirds of that has come from colleges all over Arkansas and in Oklahoma and Georgia and other places with our other education partner program. So, you know, we just evolve and again, it was really tough. And then a funny thing and funny two years into the I got laid off at Axiom and here's a 50 year old guy being laid off.

And so we didn't quite know what I was going to do because we didn't have money at Thea [Foundation]. I would have to get another job and everything, so our board, which at that time included President Clinton, decided that I should do this full-time. And so they hired me as Executive Director making, you know, next to nothing, but it was wonderful. I didn't care. And so that's how we really started to grow. And now we offer 36 scholarships a year, about $100,000 in scholarships a year. We have our closet program where we give out between $100,000 and $200,000 grants for teachers all over the state to get art materials and music and dance and anything they need for their classes. We have the Arts Reconstruction program that’s primarily for high school visual arts programs, and we try to give those teachers high level training if I can learn more mediums to offer their students and to sorta upgrade their arts programs in the schools.

Over the last 20 years, how would you describe the impact Thea Foundation has made on the community at large?

I think the first legacy comes from our programs if you take our scholarships and, and then if you know a lot about how art teachers in many, many school districts are treated—it's pretty rough. A lot of them have no budgets to be able to do what they're trying to do, which is to inspire young people to get in touch with their creativity, which is huge, but they're not given money for their classrooms. And if they are, it's just a little bit. So that [plus] all these scholarship competitions—ten scholarships in visual arts, ten scholarships in performing arts, film five scholarships, five scholarships creative writing and spoken word and two scholarships for fashion design.

So if you take all of the teachers that teach those at all the schools across the state, all these teachers now have a place to go. They can educate their students on the Thea Foundation and on why we're doing it. Thea’s story is very inspiring to a lot of young people, and so these kids get engaged.

In fact, in a lot of school districts—Mountain Home, and Little Rock, Hot Springs, all over the state—teachers start talking about Thea Scholarships in junior high school. [...] That's number one, it's motivated teachers to be inspired to get their kids involved in something big and a goal to set.

And then when the kids get engaged, they sense and feel, Thea—a lot of them are good out there on their radar or journal entries or see her art and everything—cause that's a girl their age speaking to them. And so I've gotten a lot of letters from parents and all kinds of things. So there's just a goodness about all of them.

Then take our Art Closet program. There are a lot of teachers who wouldn't be able to do a very good job because all they're using are paper or paper plates and pencils to do art. And we found a lot of that because in these Spanish, especially smaller, rural school districts, these are teachers that are trained and they'll do a good job if you give them the materials. But when you're not given credit for even being an important aspect of the educational system, it really gets you down. Because we've been able to support financially, a lot of teachers—94% of Art Closet grants go to really high high poverty area schools—so it motivates them. They're able to do their job.

And then sort of the backside of things, I’ve got a lot of calls from parents who go through what Linda and I have been through and because they've seen how we honor Thea, I guess they think we have some magic potion.

I mean, we really don't. And all we try to do when parents want to talk to us about what to do, how do you get out of this hole you're in, get your heart patched up a little bit—you just find a right to honor your child if you want to. And we were lucky in that Thea’s transition was something that we could pass forward that would be good for other kids. So in a way, I think people look to us as having done something courageous. I don't look at it as courageous. I look at it as we had to do this and that it's important that we all find something we can do for other people. And unfortunately, it came out of this tragedy with us, but we're not going to let that pass.

When we saw something that we could do to offer the community in the state, we were in it a hundred percent.

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 27

S

SHARON SHARON KILLIAN

haron Killian is an artist who is passionate about discovering cultural connections through the universal language of art. Her work as president of both Art Ventures NWA and NWA African American Heritage Association helps to connect communities in the region from both cultural and artistic perspectives. She believes that melding culture with art is an opportunity for local, globally significant education; brings critical thinking to the table; gives us a chance to dispel preconceived and often false notions about each other; and creates change on the individual, grass-roots level.

How did you get into working with art nonprofits?

As an artist I understand how difficult it can be for a gallery to show interest in your work. Artists are subject to the same pressures as the rest of society, and can be rejected because what they are doing isn't popular enough. Or, it can be simply that the artist doesn't look the part, doesn't reflect the people behind the reception desk. I wanted to create a change by opening opportunity for a broad variety of artists including those who don't all fall into the historical pattern of gallery representation.

When Art Ventures first rebranded, what was the vision for the organization?

Our byline is "Art for Everyone" and we really mean it. Everyone won't be an artist in the maker sense of the word, but we all respond to our world every day by creating a visual persona, for instance. We want those people to be able to feel they can learn about art-thinking, and to appreciate it as a means of communicating across cultures. And, importantly, we wanted everyone to find a piece of art (large or small) that they love and collect it; creating a symbiosis in our ecosystem.

Do you feel like you have stayed true to that vision? If things

KILLIAN

have changed, how have you navigated those changes?

We have used our mission as a guide for every step we have taken and continue to take, even in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. I believe we have survived many hardships by trying to be laser focused on our mission. Access in a physical sense is an important aspect of our mission and making our new gallery space fully accessible is part of the change will navigate with our new gallery spaces.

Art Ventures has been a major advocate for artists of color. Do you feel that the organization has helped create new opportunities for these artists and shift the cultural conversation in NWA to be more inclusive?

Creating center space for BIPOC and all their intersections is an important part of creating a cultural landscape within which communities thrive. I agree that Art Ventures helped to shift the cultural conversation in NWA to be more inclusive. But, as you know, there is always more work to be done.

What have been the challenges you've faced as an independent nonprofit gallery? How have you worked to overcome them?

We have had challenges that exist because this is a Black woman led non-profit. Being that I know the construct is what it is, but also that the system must begin to work or we as a community will not thrive, I have persevered. The fact is that with all of the energy and gifts Art Ventures bring, underfunding is still a problem. In spite of this, we have definitely attracted great people in the community who without fanfare, support this critical work that we do such as the curatorial internship program, K-12 Gallery Initiative and key exhibitions and programming.

How did the new location come about? What are your thoughts on it?

We had a breakthrough! A donor saw an opportunity to acquire a property within a stone's throw of the cultural corridor and thought of Art Ventures. I said yes. We are grateful to have our indoor and outdoor exhibition and events space for a new executive director to help activate and grow. Although we currently have a multi-year lease, we will be working on a fundraising drive to develop 20 S. Hill into the Art Ventures center with artist studios, adult and children's galleries, and more.

What are the plans for Art Ventures in the coming years?

Within reasonable terms, we want to return to robust art sales so that represented artists can make a living and bring joy to collectors wherever they live or work. And, we would like to get artists into studios so the community can appreciate art making in real time. We also want to continue to excel at creating thoughtful and diverse exhibitions while continuing to build a workforce with our curatorial intern program that now includes students from NWACC and SOA. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Yes. I want to thank you and The Idle Class for also being a part of the effort to make NWA a more culturally inclusive community.

28 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

D

STEVE CLARK

espite being the second largest city in Arkansas, for many years Fort Smith was mostly known for its frontier history, not its contemporary cultural impact within the region. But in 2015, things changed. Businessman and art enthusiast Steve Clark brought together a group of community leaders to form the nonprofit 64.6 Downtown and launch The Unexpected, an annual public art festival that turned the barren walls of downtown Fort Smith into a visual feast.

The Unexpected has brought major international street artists such as Vhils, D*face, Ana Maria, Bicicleta Semfrio and more to the state. It has inspired cities across Arkansas to look for new ways to reinvent themselves through public art and left a lasting impact on our region.

Walk us through the origin of The Unexpected and your role in the creation.

What sort of support and/or pushback did you receive from the Fort Smith community?

What role has the Unexpected played in training Arkansas artists to do large-scale projects?

We’ve partnered with UAFS students and faculty and the local high schools - Northside, Southside and Future School - since our inception in 2015, and cultivated relationships with local artists and artisans along the way which resulted in having local artists on the official program line up in 2018 and 2019. While I understand the desire that local artist have to be involved, and it’s a great compliment to us, that simply wasn’t the event we developed. Our intention was to bring the outside in, to a place the world might never look otherwise. Now we have a platform for Arkansas as an artistic and artist friendly state, and that’s a benefit to the creative economy on the whole.

Artists who have grown up with us through The Unexpected now have opportunities to travel and work nationally and internationally through established connections made through The Unexpected.

STEVE CLARK

The Unexpected was born after establishing relationships with a few artists who had insight into the street art scene. I was able to have conversations about what it meant, from the artist’s perspective, to bring art of this scale to communities, and then became interested in how the model could be applied to Fort Smith and how that might affect the community – to see unexpected art in an unexpected place.

unexpected consequences? Do you feel Fort Smith has avoided this in the areas the Unexpected has touched?

Growth and change are inevitable and it comes with growing pains unfortunately. Fort Smith is in a unique situation in that it’s growth is a bit slower and more grassroots. Essentially, the community is building the kind of city it wants to live in.

Overall the community has been very supportive. The first year I was very aware that I might have to leave town as a result of The Unexpected. I jest, but the nature of the event was to provoke, and public art by nature is disruptive. We were prepared for the criticisms because, by design, we wanted people to have a conversation about art, who we are and what we wanted to be; whether you love it or hate it, you’re talking about it.

How important is it for people of means to support public art and the arts in general?

Over the years, the Unexpected has evolved, branched out.

I’ve always enjoyed seeking out the new and unusual, and I feel, regardless of the God you believe in, if you believe in one at all, that we are a species designed to respond to order, design and beauty. So yes, in short I have always been an art lover.

What made you guys want to do that?

The beauty of being called The Unexpected is that we get to reinvent ourselves, however we see fit. It’s important to us that the program maintains its relevancy and authenticity. Yes, the art is nice and lasting, but how are we able to make those stronger impacts through more individualized programs that tie into social needs within the community?

How has creative placemaking affected Fort Smith?

Many great programs and initiatives have established themselves in Fort Smith from Peacemaker Music Festival, Steel Horse Rally and Ales for Trails to name a few. The town is uniquely entrepreneurial, and the city continues to make great strides in offering activities that focus on community engagement, health, well-being and etc. I’m proud that The Unexpected is a part of that.

With civic funds constantly being cut for art programs, it’s more important than ever for people to support public art and the arts with not just their money, but with their time and participation.

Have you always been an art lover? If not, what got you into art collecting and supporting art projects?

If you were talking to a mayor or city council in a town that was on the fence about public art, what would your pitch to them be about the importance of it?

Art helps a community with its sense of place and purpose, and can catalyze activity, innovation and growth. These are all good things for healthy and sustainable communities.

What's next for the Unexpected and/or you as a patron of the arts?

We’ll continue to bring art to Arkansas and Fort Smith while dialing into how our programs can affect positive change.

Over the last few years, development and revitalization has received backlash as gentrification. What are your thoughts on development having WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 29

EGACY ISSUE

LE

G

SSU

CY ISSUE LE GA

YI

CY

EL

AC

I

U SS

AC

SUE LEGA CY Y IS

IS

S 30 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

EG

We talked with some Arkansans who have made an impact on the Natural State's art scene. Find the full interviews online, and in the meantime, discover who helps make Arkansas arts and culture extraordinary.

L

UE

UE

LE

GA

E LEGACY IS S

LEGACY SECTION

From Easter champagne brunches at their family home to annual themed Halloween parties at Maxine’s Taproom in Fayetteville, it’s safe to say Hannah Withers and Ben Gitchel know how to have a good time. So much so, the couple has brought these experiences to the NWA community through their businesses Leverett Lounge, Little Bread Company and the seasonal pop-up bar Holidaze, as well as through their work as selfdescribed caretakers of Maxine’s.

Although they have since sold Little Bread Company to new owners, Hannah and Ben have made downtown Fayetteville all the more magical since moving here from Eureka Springs over a decade ago. Between balancing and tasting their menus or working with the Fayetteville Independent Restaurant Alliance to help raise awareness of and support for the service industry, their love for the region is evident in every conversation. According to a close friend, each space they create gives guests a feeling of connection, community, and celebration—and that’s because these experiences and places are authentic to who Hannah and Ben are.

Where does your culinary inspiration come from?

HANNAH / Ben makes the menus, and he gets his inspiration from all over the place.

He really loves discovering food and cultures that he’s never found or understood before.

BEN / Food I like to eat!

HANNAH / We like street food—he finds a lot of inspiration from simple dishes that can be made inexpensively from a lot of different cultures. That’s what we kind of fell in love with Southwestern cuisine; it’s a lot of chilis, and a lot of corn and beans—things you can work with and make different.

BEN / Lower-income people have to make food taste good with the least amount of ingredients possible, and they do a damn good job of it, and you can trace a lot of fine dining like braised meats and spices and all that back to that.

HANNAH / We can make a really good quality cocktail without having access to the same kind of spirits that a lot of big cities do, and I think in the bakery, we always wanted to be super casual and accessible, and I feel that way about Leverett (Lounge), too. It should be affordable, casual, fun, and not a pretentious experience, but with quality products, and I think that’s the way we’re drawn to do the things we’ve done. And part of the reason it’s successful is because it’s authentic to who we are.

How do you hope to be remembered?

BEN / Being a nice person. I don’t care if people remember me personally or not, but if they did, I’d rather that be what it was. They were [our] community; in everything we do, that’s what it’s about.

HANNAH / I think what I’m proud of and hope people remember is that we really make a big effort to take something out of what we earn in our places and find ways to support other things in the community with it. I think that’s the way business should be done […] I would hope that what (people) would remember are the things we supported through these places. Working in social culture; we use these spaces to do good work.

What’s been your favorite part of this journey so far?

HANNAH / I think when you work with the public and have a public face and relationship with your community, you’re going to have ups and downs. I’ve definitely had moments of feeling claustrophobic with the “small town-ness” of Northwest Arkansas, but I can say during COVID, I’m never going to forget the gratitude I felt when I was able to sit in a city task force meeting and hear people that were in city hall and work on our A&P team, and how devastated they were to see what was happening to our business community and how quickly they were to just say, “How can we help?” The response of the community in Fayetteville has given me a lot of hope. There’s as much good in a small town as there is bad, and I think the good has shown me this is a really special place. There is a positivity and hope living here because people are so willing to help.

Tell us about the transition from running a beloved bakery to a timeless bar.

HANNAH / Ben is a certified baker. When we wanted to open Little Bread Company, we moved to New York City for a few months, and he studied at the International Culinary Institute. New York’s another one of those hospitality towns we love, and it was just an amazing experience. Since then, I think a lot of [my taste has evolved] from being with Ben. My mom used to make things from scratch and grew a lot of things in her garden, and I’ve always known certain things are better than others, but I really started to fall down the food wormhole when I married Ben. He just loves it so much, and he loves to see people enjoy it.

How do you balance your business partnership with your marriage?

HANNAH / We have different strengths and weaknesses. I’m a little bit of a micro-manager and he grounds me. Ben and I have this way of making decisions of what we’re going to do together where we know when it’s right, and we go with it. Sometimes it’s not what we expected [it] to be, but most of the time it’s exactly what we wanted it to be. We both love to travel together and have those experiences in food and drink. We do different things that make us one whole.

BEN / It works out of blind luck!

Tell us about the famed annual events at Maxine’s.

HANNAH / I love to throw a party! We’ve been doing it the whole time we’ve been married; I love to have a group of people from all different walks of life in my backyard, having a good time, and they haven’t met each other before. That’s a really small slice of what [Block Street] Block Party was and these events that we do […] Halloween has been one of my favorite holidays my whole life, and we really experienced that in Eureka, and we felt like [kids] again. It’s a multigenerational holiday where everyone has a great time together. After we moved into this space [Maxine’s], it just kind of became an extension of what we used to do at home […]

When you take everything off the walls, it’s kind of a blank canvas. It’s just a different setting for what we’ve always done, but we get to make a living doing it. Does it get any better than that?

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 31

“What’s up, que pasa! What’s your name? Como te llamas? Let’s be friends, seamos amigos!” Al Lopez, commonly known by his stage name Papa Rap, has sung these phrases from his award-winning song “What’s Up, Que Pasa” to K-12 students and their parents since the early 1990s. His songs, radio shows, and television programs have fueled growing bilingual education and acceptance in the region, and he’s not slowing down anytime soon. With an album in the works, the multi-awardwinning artist continues to help parents and their students learn Spanish together through song and dance.

Al’s love for music started as a child when he found himself distracted from schoolwork and moved by the power of song. Although he ended up pursuing visual merchandising with JCPenney as an adult, he found his way back to music after a few trips to Northwest Arkansas for his day job.

During these trips in the 1980s he connected with producers and musicians, but his wife and family weren’t comfortable leaving their home in Puerto Rico.

know what was inside of each other, and I added that I had a proposal for them. [...]

So they started visiting schools with me and performing and after each show I would tell the little ones in the audience that my performers were still working on becoming friends and that the common ground that united them to do this was the music. And lo and behold these kids became role models for younger children and in a way they were forced to live what they were preaching through the music they were performing. But it didn’t take long before they really became friends.

How did your family and upbringing in Puerto Rico influence your desire to interact with and give back to the community in NWA? Is your family involved with your programs?

As time passes my children are growing, and I remember one day seeing my 15-year-old daughter

[In the school district] somebody had filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights saying that the Rogers School District was not complying to accommodate English as a Second Language learners [ … ] I got a call from the school [district] superintendent and he asked me if I could help make something happen. [...] So I asked him if I could train students to become an artist-traveling group and go sing my new bilingual songs in elementary and junior high schools in the district. [...]

I talked to one of the [Rogers High] school assistant principals, Loyd Phillps—who had become a good friend and always had my back—and explained to him that I would like to have a whole day pow-wow with the students that were not getting along, and if he could be with me because kids really respected him for being an ex-Razorback player and for playing football with the Chicago Bears.

So we planned it and sat with the kids in an open area, and we spent about four hours with them.

Without interrupting, we let each one in a respectful way, say his part and towards the end we found there was a lot of “They said, we said, they were, we were.” So when they were done I told them that I felt that changes were not gonna happen overnight and that we needed some time to get to

32 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

Where do you get the inspiration for songs like "Changes Don't Happen Overnight"? How did you come up with the electrifying, smile-inducing theme song for "What's Up, Que Pasa"?

The first day I went to work at Rogers High School, I was received by a giant [hateful] graffiti in the seniors locker area. Immediately I realized that there was a big problem, and that my job was going to be more than an interpreter and lunch monitor [...] Every day I was breaking up fights between Anglos and Latinos and it was horrible. [I talked to a close friend] about my frustrations with my new job, and [he had] an idea of contacting a friend of his, a musician, producer, and drummer John Ware.

John was a very creative person and suggested we create a public service announcement for TV with some of the kids that were having challenges in getting along. The PSA had two young ladies, one Latina and one Anglo that got along great, and two young men, one Latino and one Anglo that didn’t like each other very much. But this was an opportunity to be on TV so that was a common ground.

His musical passion shined through his work, and in 1994 his wife encouraged him to take the opportunity presented to him years before and travel back to Northwest Arkansas to record an album—but not without finding other work to support his family back home. That led him to a job as an interpreter and lunch monitor in the Rogers School District, where he discovered the power music had on troubled students. That was his cue; soon after, Papa Rap took to the stage.

Is there an educational or creative moment that sticks out in your mind when you reflect on your work over the years?

tears in his eyes, he told me that he was sorry and my mother immediately interrupted him and told me, “Your father was a musician before you were born and his father before him. They had such a hard time and a hard life because of music that your father got scared when he saw you with that inclination.” Immediately my mom took out a book of songs that my father had written. From there on, my father became my biggest fan and I thank God that we had this closure before he passed away because I realized that all I wanted in my life was for my parents to accept me as who I was. That is why to this day, I am always telling parents my story so they can start identifying in their children their natural abilities so they can facilitate their children’s intellectual growth.

and her friends as they listened to some rap music.

I really felt that as my daughter grew up, I was losing her, that she wasn’t “Daddy’s little princess” anymore. I really didn’t like the message in the rap music she was listening to with her friends, especially because of my daughters age, so I decided I was going to write a rap song for her. I wrote a song called “Papa Rap,” and my daughter hated it, but her friends liked it a lot. I saw on local television [in Puerto Rico] that they had a talent search contest so I decided to participate singing my “Papa Rap” song. I remember that my two boys were little and they were with me on stage pretending to play instruments while I sang my song.

As a child, Papa Rap expressed an interest in music but was unsupported by his father, so he abandoned the dream. As he pursued music in his 30s, his parents never knew about his trials and tribulations. In 1998, Papa Rap went to visit his parents in Puerto Rico and was excited to tell them about his collaboration with the Rogers School District and share the news about the $5,000 award he received from the John Lennon Songwriting Contest for “What’s Up, Que Pasa” in the children’s category, which he donated to the school for new equipment and supplies.

In Puerto Rico in a kind of confrontational conversation, I asked my father why he had not allowed me to follow my call as a musician. With

It was an instant hit, and every local television channel picked it up and these high school kids became overnight celebrities. So every day I would get kids asking me if I was going to do another TV commercial because they wanted to be in it.

So that gave me an idea and it was to create a multicultural club. We met once a month, and in my first meeting I had mostly all the Latinos in school, around 50 but in the second meeting we had the 50 Latinos and about 100 other kids, mostly Anglos. As you can imagine, I had no experience and did not know what I was doing so I decided to start working on another commercial for TV and to write my first bilingual song. Remember that my main goal coming to Arkansas was to remix my album and get out of here as quick as I could.

So in order to survive the moment I wrote my first bilingual song called “What’s Up, Que Pasa,” and again my good friend John Ware in conjunction with Ozark Film and Video helped me produce a music video with more high school kids.

The songs were born here, I guess as a way to express my desire of wanting the community to get along. I was dreaming and I realized that like John Lennon said, I wasn’t the only one.

Doug Stowe began his woodworking career in 1976 and a year later founded the Eureka Springs Guild of Artists and Craftspeople. He has launched many other ventures since then: In 1998, he was one of three founders of the Eureka Springs School of the Arts. In 2001, he started the Wisdom of the Hands Program at the Clear Spring School, a small independent school in Eureka Springs, to prove the value of wood shop and hands-on learning. In 2009, the Arkansas Arts Council named Doug an Arkansas Living Treasure for his work with wood and in education.

In 1995, Doug started writing books and articles about woodworking. He has since published 90 articles in various woodworking magazines and educational journals and written 13 books on woodworking techniques. He began his blog, Wisdom of the Hands, in 2006.

Doug continues to teach woodworking for grades 1–12 at the Clear Spring School, to work daily in his own shop, and to travel around teaching adult woodworking classes for schools and clubs. He lives in a hardwood forest at the edge of Eureka Springs with his wife, Jean.

How did you get into making furniture?

I moved to Eureka Springs to join the Eureka Springs Pottery Coop and when it folded I went to work for a small company making furniture out of old barn boards. That was called Arkansas Primitives. One crew would go out and salvage material from old barns while we made furniture from the lumber. When that company went out of business I did not have the money to start a pottery on my own, so I drove to my parents home in Omaha, Nebraska, picked up the 1948 shopsmith that my dad had given me on my 14th birthday and with a few more tools set up shop as a woodworker.

How did you get into teaching?

My mother was a teacher, my great aunt Allene was a teacher. Two of my sisters were teachers and it is a terrible lie that some people have said, “that those who can’t do, teach.” Nothing could be more offensive or further from the truth.

My daughter is a teacher. I got into teaching however, because as a maker of wooden things, and aspiring to learn to be a better maker of wooden things, I had to educate my customers and clientele as to the value of the techniques I was hoping to learn and use. Also, when I moved to Eureka Springs forests in the area were being clear-cut to form pastures and make room for gas stations. South of here the US forestry service was spraying defoliants similar to those used in Vietnam to kill hardwood forests to allow faster growing pines to take their place. As one who was newly introduced to the beauty of our native hardwoods, I took as part of my work the mission of educating folks as to the beauty and value of these woods. Teaching is something every craftsman must do in order to assert the value of what we do. Teaching can be direct or indirect but is nevertheless essential.

What are some important lessons you try to instill in your students, like philosophy, not necessarily how to create a specific piece of furniture or something?

When I started my wisdom of the hands program at the clear spring school, shop classes were being closed throughout the US. We were to be a “service economy” in an “information age,” and it was assumed wood working in school was intended only to prepare students for industrial employment, and it was assumed that “all kids must go to college,” college then being the only societally approved path to success. Shop class was no longer considered relevant to American education. I had learned a few things in my own shop that gave me a different perspective.

First, I had been alerted that my brains were in my hands. And from that perspective I’d observed that woodworking was not irrelevant but was instead a perfect storm of integrated activity, all of which applied to what we hoped to teach kids in school. In the shop I was constantly using all my senses and knowledge of physics, chemistry, art, design, math, business management and narrative skills, both verbal and nonverbal. Instead of being pushed aside, I knew in my bones that shop activities for most students should be central to their educational experiences.

But what is the most important lesson? It’s not how to make something, it’s to begin to see the interconnections between things. Woodworking is not an isolated discipline, but instead, at its best draws you into a wholeness and holiness of life. All other craft disciplines are the same. They can be useful in building empowerment as well as helping to form a sense of being interconnected in the fabric of whole life. Deciding in schools that some kids would go to woodshop and others to college the loss of that sense of interconnectedness has been disastrous.

What role did you play in launching Eureka Springs School of the Arts?

In about 1978 I called the first meeting of artists from which the Eureka Springs Guild of Artists and craftspeople was formed. I was proclaimed president at that meeting because I was the only one there with a pencil and paper to record attendees. Much later and years down the road, Mary Springer and I began attempting to build the Guild into a school but found that it had the wrong tax status, one that would be nearly impossible to change. So we closed out that organization and with Eleanor Lux founded ESSA as a school without walls. ESSA is the direct descendent of the Eureka Springs Guild of Artists and Craftspeople. By that time I’d done several furniture projects for Robyn Horn, chairman of the Windgate Foundation. When I told her we were building a school, she suggested that when I was sure we had our ducks in a row I should ask for help. After a few years and when we'd proven

our ducks to be in a row, they b e c a m e instrumental at every point in our growth. I continue to serve on the ESSA board.

How does it feel to have seen ESSA grow and thrive?

It is amazing. All artists wonder how history will regard the things we have made. ESSA is our best work as it brings out the best in others also.

Do you think you will always teach?

I hope that when my direct teaching days are done, I can teach by example, still making things that are useful to others.

If you haven't addressed this already, what do you love about teaching?

Otto Salomon, one of the founders of Educational Sloyd said that while the value of the carpenter’s work is in the object made, the value of the student’s work is in the student. What I see in my teaching is that students are directly empowered to both do and understand. What they are taught is then tested and proven in their own hands.In college I remember friends and I asking each other “what we would do when we got back to the real world” because we knew first hand, the artificiality of it all. When students do things that are real, making useful beauty to share with others there are no questions like that.

What are some of your biggest accomplishments if you haven't mentioned them already?

I’ve written and published 13 books and am working on number 14. Two of them have been published in German translations. I’ve written over a hundred articles in woodworking magazines and educational journals. I like to think that I have had some impact on a renewed interest in shop classes. I’d like to think that people will someday get the idea that shop classes are not just for those not going to college, but will instead be meaningful to all students, as they are at the Clear Spring School, and not delayed as they are with some of our students at ESSA where many of our older students are discovering and asserting their own artistic creativity for the first time having spent years without having discovered such things.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

I am an advocate of learning from the real world, a thing that's become even more vital as so much of our lives have been shifted online.

The engagement of the hands is symbolic of the whole person, like when the first mate calls, "All hands on deck!"

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 33

El Dorado native Odie Blackmon bought his first guitar in high school.

Within a few years, he found himself in a country band in Los Angeles before moving to Nashville to make his mark as a songwriter. Through years of grind, he broke through on Music Row and penned hits for George Strait, Gary Allan and LeeAnn Womack. These days, he’s focused on teaching the craft to a new generation of songwriters.

What was the first song that you ever heard growing up that made you just think “I want to do that”?

I can't say that there was a song that made me think I wanted to write songs as a kid, but I can say that I was naturally drawn to songs. Like when I was really young in particular “Delta Dawn” by Tanya Tucker and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” by Charlie Rich. I thought they were really great. And I'm talking like five years old. And then also, maybe my first awareness of songwriting was The Mac Davis Show. Before he was a movie star and he was a country artist and had written songs, but he had a variety show. During part of the show he would walk out into the audience and somebody in the crowd would introduce themselves and say where they're from or what they did. And Mac would make a song about him right on the spot, and it was usually kind of funny. And I just thought that was the best thing.

And oddly enough, through the years … I ended up being pals with Mac and writing songs with him. And he kind of spoiled a secret. He told me that you know, the producers would go out in the lines where the people were waiting to get in during the day and, and have people fill out note cards and then they would take them back to Mack and he'd pick some out. And so he had a few hours to come up with something. It wasn't quiet on the spot, but that was a real neat part of his TV show that influenced a lot of songwriters.

Let me say this, too. That I grew up with my mom and uncle’s 45 records from when they were teenagers. And I was very aware of The Beatles from an early age because of that and thought they had good songs.

How old were you when you started, like when you picked up the guitar and started writing?

I started writing lyrics to other people's melodies and stuff when I was about 13 or 14. My old man gave me a little money to get a suit for graduation. I was supposed to go to JC Penney's to buy me a pair of slacks and a shirt or something. And when I got kicked out of the Senior Follies for skipping school, I just decided I wanted to do something I wanted to do. And I took that money and went and bought a guitar at Parker's Music. It was right around April or May of my senior year of high school. I was 17. And that's how I started learning to play [and]...as soon as I knew enough chords, I started trying to write some songs.

What was the first song you wrote that you were proud of?

When I lived out in Los Angeles, I had gone to see Dwight Yoakam do an acoustic show at The Palace in Hollywood. And it wasn't his normal band.

It was like more of a rockabilly, bluegrass kind of acoustic set up. He did a Bill Monroe song called “Can't You Hear Me Callin’?” And I didn't know that was a Bill Monroe song … I liked that it was real hillbilly, but Dwight kind of rockabilly … And from that, in my mind from hearing it that night, I kind of copied it. Didn't rip it off, but borrowed from it and turned it into a song I wrote about being out in LA and being disenfranchised and being from a small town and feeling kind of, you know, wanting to get the hell out of there. It was called “Adios, Farewell,” and it was a song basically about a Southern guy not fitting in [out] in LA. What are the essentials to a good song?

First off, what's a good song? There's different types. Some songs are poetic and have a lot of meaning. And then some songs just make you want to dance and have a drink and both are valid. I would say though that a simple sing-a-long-able, catchy melody, that's redundant enough that you can catch on to it, but not so redundant you get bored of it. Lyrics that are not too generic but make you want to care and be memorable, but not too poetic and flowery that they lose a listener...It's a balance between 34 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

everyday language and poetry...I have a friend that says, “A song's gotta hit you in the head, the heart, the loins or the feet.” And I believe that.

What are some things about songwriting people probably don't realize?

How much work it is and how many hours have to be put in...If you write a hundred songs and one is great, like really great and that's pretty good odds, man. People don't realize how much crap you have to write just for the stars to line up to write something that is really great. For me, the marker is can it have integrity and be commercial as well? And can it be timeless and timely? Can you write something that means something to you, but it also touches other people and people don't realize the work you have to put in. It's not something that you fall into. It's something you learn by instinct, and the only way you can get those instincts are by doing it over and over and over again. And I can tell you as someone that spent over 20 years showing up every day and trying to pull stuff out of thin air, that's not easy to keep that creative fire going when you're working at that kind of level. And when people are paying you money and betting on you, you're showing up and you're working. It's not just like people sometimes hanging out. It's a craft. You’re like a journeyman craftsman.

These days you’re spending more time in the classroom at Middle Tennessee University and Vanderbilt University teaching students songwriting. What are some lessons you’d relate to aspiring songwriters?

I would tell young songwriters a few things—the whole idea about drugs or alcohol inspiring creativity is a total myth and a total dead end road. And I think there's a lot of older creators that will tell you that. Then I would also say that people should do this because they love music, not to get rich or become famous. And that fame, and people that are in that kind of world—that's not really as great as people think it is. The whole goal should just be if you love music and you’re eat up with it and there ain't anything else you could do, you should do it.

Another thing is that everybody doesn't have to make a living at it. Music's a beautiful thing, like the lady that plays piano at the church on Sundays and loves to do that. That's a beautiful thing too. I have students at Vanderbilt that are chemical engineers and they're gonna have a wonderful career doing that. They'll always have music to do as well.

[Songwriting] is a selfish endeavor. You basically got to give up living in the town where your family is and everything you've ever known. And everything else is going to take a back seat to it if you're really gonna do it in a way that's going to get you anywhere. It's not easy, but it's a beautiful thing to see somebody devote their whole life to a melody with words and wanting to communicate to people like that. And that's really all it is—sharing our lives and our experiences and communicating. And so it's an honor to help people do that.

Bernice and Bryan Hembree have a storied history in the Fayetteville music scene. After their band 3 Penny Acre decided to go on indefinite hiatus in 2013, Bernice and Bryan Hembree started Smokey and the Mirror to explore new sounds and songs. When the musical couple met in 2002, they immediately hit it off and began performing together.

By 2010 the Hembrees held regular yearly house concerts, hosting musicians at their house and inviting friends to enjoy and support live music. That summer, they didn’t have enough space to both house the musicians and host the audience. Their longtime friend Chef Jerrmy Gawthrop offered to host the one-day musical extravaganza at his restaurant Greenhouse Grille, and by the following year it had evolved into the Fayetteville Roots Festival.

Fayetteville became even funkier, and the rest is history.

music and shared joy in introducing friends to new (and old) music keeps us inspired to bring musicians to Fayetteville, either for the annual festival or to the Roots HQ. Overall, we both find fulfillment in supporting each other whether on stage or digging a hole in the garden. Having trust and support from a partner makes the dreams and goals of our lives enjoyable and achievable, or at least gives you someone to lean on when the balance becomes dizzy!

Why do we need Roots Fest?

BRYAN / I would be dinner backstage.

I love the feeling of artists gathering together and sharing a meal. Some of my most favorite moments of the festival have been popping backstage to grab a plate and seeing so many artists together smiling and enjoying the company and grateful to be on the gig.

BERNICE / I can say with certainty that Fayetteville Roots has brought artists to this area that have never made it to Northwest Arkansas previously: John Prine, Booker T and the MGs, Yola, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Hiss Golden Messenger, Anaïs Mitchell, Josh Ritter, Gregory Alan Isakov, Birds of Chicago; I could go on and on. Roots has worked hard to bring fantastic music to Northwest Arkansas, and to make aware how lovely our town and region is to those visiting. Now, is it a "need" to have those acts come to our town? No. But doesn't it feel good when you don't have to travel outside your hometown to hear and see good music and enjoy good food? Yes. Have there been any challenges in balancing family, your musical careers, supporting other musicians and heading a festival? How have you overcome them?

If you were a Roots Fest menu item, what would you be and why?

BERNICE / Strawberry Shortcake.

Everyone has their own take or variation on this simple dessert. But like a good song that many people cover, it's always good. Also, I always appreciate a chef's special secret sauce: it tends to be the extra little thing that adds a special touch, just like jumping on stage and adding some harmony to a song. It's the special topping that can make it zing.

What's the best piece of advice you ever received?

BERNICE / Don't piss off the sound guy/gal.

BRYAN / I don't know that any one person said this to me, but over time I have come to realize that "Making It" is an illusion. It doesn't exist. The only thing that exists is getting to the end of the road and looking back and realizing the amazing opportunity to have built a life in music.

BERNICE / For people who love problem solving, the challenges are manageable. Luckily, Bryan and I see eye-to-eye on most things, and we are grateful for the other paths in our lives that create a healthy balance. Bryan has worked at the U of A for 18 years, and enjoys what he does. Finding a balance between the day job and the music job is most challenging for him, and honestly I'm still not sure how he does it. Bryan certainly has magic energy and a willingness to work hard on his ideas, otherwise the balance wouldn't work. Having a child, now a teenager, with her own interests in the world helps to keep us grounded and motivated. Our deep love of

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 35

The Advocates GARBO HEARNE & SANDY MARTIN The economic impact of the arts in Arkansas cannot be ignored. In 2014, gallery owner Garbo Hearne teamed up with Mitch Mitchell to create Arkansans for the Arts, a nonprofit organization devoted to emphasizing the importance of this $2.9 billion industry, which accounts for over 33,000 jobs, in our state. Garbo served as board chair for several years and recently stepped down, handing the reins to Sandy Martin of Eureka Springs. Sandy is no stranger to philanthropy; she currently serves on many boards including those of FilmNWA, Northwest Arkansas Tourism Association and the Arkansas PBS Arts Advisory Board. Together, they are uniting creatives, nonprofit organizations and legislators to give the arts a seat at the table for economic growth.

What are the different ways to advocate for the arts?

SANDY / A good portion of arts advocacy has traditionally danced around the soft edges with a focus on the visual and performing arts. While those disciplines are very important, the arts are much broader and represent a large portion of the state’s economy. Through the development of our Creative Economy Committee, we began to focus on the economic impact of the creative industries. Through our research, we are able to demonstrate impact in real numbers of jobs, revenue, community development success stories and—most importantly—the role that the arts play in growing, retaining, retraining and attracting talent for Arkansas. Our advocacy efforts are focused on ARTS MEANS BUSINESS .

To advocate effectively, it is important to have data, connections, open dialogue, strong, simple visuals and personal stories.

Arkansans for the Arts provides those tools through our statewide reach and strong board of directors and advisers representing every district in the state. We provide services that translate those tools into infographics, videos, articles [and] blogs, town hall meetings, and opportunities to learn and share from peers, legislators, funders and our network of national and regional partners. We are in constant communication with our members to assist in their advocacy efforts.

A 2021 goal is to launch the first Advocacy Leadership Institute in Arkansas. Through the Institute we will train artists, arts organizations, students, economic developers and influencers on advocating for the arts and creative economy. They will benefit from our up-to-date county level data and our powerful communications platform, VoterVoice.

36 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

Advocating for the arts isn’t one-size-fits-all. Different messages and strategies are required for different issues and audiences.

Arkansans for the Arts demystifies the art of advocacy and helps our members learn how to customize it for their needs.

What are some of the arts categories that have the greatest economic impact?

SANDY / Tourism, film and digital production, cultural heritage, performance (theatrical, music, etc.), architecture/design and product development.

How are you working to influence the Arkansas legislature to support the arts?

GARBO / We are working closely with the Legislative Arts Caucus led by Senator Joyce Elliott and Representative Les Warren to develop legislation for a statewide cultural asset inventory and Arts+Technology Boot Camps. We respond to their requests for data and information on the state and national level. They are invited to and do participate in virtual and in-person meetings with their constituents.

We have an active Legislative Committee and Creative Economy Committee that develop research, strategies, infographics and tool kits to share with legislators and members.

Through our partnerships with Americans for the Arts on the national level, Mid-America Arts Alliance on the regional level and the Arkansas Arts Council on the state level, we organize and produce Arkansas Arts Advocacy Days and town hall meetings with members and legislators throughout the state.

What are some ways our legislature could support the arts right now?

SANDY / 1) Direct relief funding to artists and arts organizations particularly in rural areas; 2) To provide equity in support and funding for BIPOC artists, arts organizations and communities; 3) Support expanding the arts in education at the K-12 level 3) include the arts in CTE programs; 4) Support legislation that integrates the art in health and wellness (art therapies, military, post-pandemic); 5) Support Arkansans for the Arts initiative to do a statewide inventory of all cultural and arts assets to identify the gaps and opportunities; 6) Embrace the fact that Arts Means Business through revenue, jobs and talent, and include the arts in every policy and piece of legislation pertaining to education, economic development and workforce development.

What are some of the long-term goals for Arkansans for the Arts?

GARBO / To secure a seat on the Arkansas Economic Development Commission designated for the Creative Economy/Arts & Technology. (This is a short-term goal.)

To celebrate the rich culture of Arkansas by elevating support, funding and recognition of diversity and inclusion through the arts.

To continue membership growth and influence as the voice of the arts and experts in support of Arkansas’ creative economy.

To produce a large pool of young professional arts advocates informed with strategies, tools, access and research to persuade policy within their communities and throughout the state.

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 37

Charlaine Harris is a best-selling author known primarily for her mystery series Southern Vampire Mysteries (adapted by HBO as True Blood) and Aurora Teagarden. She grew up in Tunica, Mississippi, and attended Rhodes College in Memphis where she began writing plays. For twenty years, she lived with her family in Magnolia. Rural Arkansas and Louisiana have served as settings for many of her books including her Shakespeare series. She is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and has served as the president for the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance.

Why did you first begin writing?

I was born wanting to write. The minute I learned how to print letters on paper, I was hooked. So I would say in the second or third grade I was writing things to read to my class.

What are the essentials to creating a good character?

Knowing the character thoroughly. You don’t have to lay the character out in your head before you begin to write (some people do). You just have to know what that character would do in any given situation. Start with what he or she carries everywhere: in pockets, or in a purse or backpack. What environment produced this person?

Do you plot your work out well in advance or just see where the story takes you?

The story takes me. That’s an exciting and dangerous way to write, and sometimes means I waste a lot of time. But it’s more fun for me than planning, and I’m all about not being bored.

When did you begin writing mysteries?

What is your writing process like—are you up at 6 a.m. pounding the keys or are you a night owl?

When I married my second husband, he gave me the green light to stay home and write. It was a great, great, luxury. I had always known I wanted to write mysteries, because that was what I read, so in the first year (I think) I wrote a book.

I am certainly no night owl. I work from about 7:30 [a.m.] to one, though work might include answering emails, ordering supplies, and so on. I sometimes work in the afternoon, too, especially when a deadline is looming.

Why does the public love mystery stories over other genres?

It’s the only original American literary form, so I like to think that’s one reason. Mysteries are an escape to a world where peril is second-hand, which is comforting, and a world where justice almost always prevails.

Let’s talk about your first novel. What was the process to get it published?

I had the good fortune to be taking a class in creative writing at UMSL, and my teacher was a former employee of Houghton Mifflin. To telescope the story, she recommended the book to an editor HM, and that editor accepted it.

To our understanding, your first two novels were standalone stories. Why did you decide to start writing a book series?

I hoped it would increase my readership and therefore my sales. Series were becoming ever more prominent. I found I really enjoyed not having to reinvent the wheel each time, to have the leisure to develop characters more thoroughly, to chronicle lives along with the individual mystery of each book.

What would be your advice for telling a good story?

You can start by analyzing a book you think is great. What’s the rhythm of the story? What appeals to you about it? Do you remember the characters after you close the book? Do you want to read about them again?

What elements make up a good mystery?

The same elements that make up all good books: a cohesive plot, vivid characters, and good dialog.

38 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

Who are some people in your life you would cite as influences that helped you get to be the storyteller you are today?

The many writers I read growing up: E. X. Ferrars, Jane Austen, Daphne du Maurier, Agatha Christie, Charlotte Brontë, Rex Stout, Michael Gilbert, Ray Bradbury, and on and on and on.

Why do you think small, rural towns make good settings for a story?

There’s a closed society in any book, really. With small towns, that’s geographically determined. In a city, the story determines it. There’s a challenge in trying to hide a crime in a town where everybody knows who you are, what you do, and when you do it.

Are there any ways living in Arkansas affected your work that we haven’t discussed?

I was fascinated by the courtesy and kindness. Granted, I knew that had to be variable since I was a white middle-aged middle-class woman, but people would always stop to help you, complete strangers.

Looking back on your body of work, what are some highlights from your career?

It’s certainly been a long career, forty years. I’ve had some great adventures, gone to some amazing countries, and walked the red carpet at a Hollywood premiere. I’ve met people I never imagined I’d meet.

Most dear to my heart, I’ve gotten three lifetime achievement awards: one for romance, one from Malice Domestic (which celebrates the cozy mystery), and this year the Edgar Award, presented by the Mystery Writers of America.

Arkansas Arts Council presented Michael Warrick with the Arkansas Living Treasure Award in 2020. He has created sculptures for parks in Changchun, China, and Hanam, South Korea.

In the Little Rock area, his sculptures can be found at the National Park Services Central High Museum, the Central Arkansas Library System, the Statehouse Convention Center, the Vogel Swartz Sculpture Garden, the University of Arkansas Ottenheimer Library, the CARTI Cancer Center, the Bernice Garden, the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute and more. In 2019 and 2020, he installed sculptures at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith; the city of Southlake, Texas; and the Grove in Whittier, California. He also works as an art professor at University of Arkansas–Little Rock. A retrospective entitled Michael Warrick: Clay, Metal, Stone, Wood will take place at the UALR Wingate Center for Art and Design’s Brad Cushman Gallery from June 1 to July 22. Warrick is represented by Boswell Mourot Fine Art in Little Rock.

and writing in my sketchbooks as an experimental dialogue with myself. Once I feel like the concept is worth developing, I will take it to the next step of more complex drawings, working in clay, developing a concept in wax as a preparation for bronze, 3-D renderings and possibly a model for a monumental concept.

A good process example is a work I finished the third week of February. I have had a drawing that my son Phillip did when he was 3 ½ years old posted in my studio for 20 years now. It is a wonderful and simple drawing of me in a rocket ship. On Dec. 26, I was reading the DemocratGazette about the architect Michael Graves and his creative philosophy, i.e. “Form, Function and Whimsy.” It reminded me of that drawing and spurred me to do a drawing of my own about a cat and a dog on a rocket adventure. A few weeks ago, I was telling my business agent in Colorado about that drawing and he encouraged me to develop it further. So, during our snowstorm in

What first drew you to art?

Since I am drawn to creating objects, life-size works and large-scale public art the process is unique for each type of work. The common denominator is the vetting process of drawing

Do you prefer creating figurative pieces or abstract pieces? What sort of a challenge does each bring?

For life-size and small works my primary subjects are the figure and portraiture. For monumental work I prefer creating abstractions of everyday objects. Each approach brings a different set of design and technical skill sets.

Why did you decide to do the Seeds of Hope piece at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute?

How did it feel to be named an Arkansas Living Treasure?

To be recognized for the 50 plus years I have learned the craft of metalworking is validating. The effort over those years to learn how to weld, cast and fabricate with stainless steel, cor-ten steel, iron, aluminum and bronze has been an enriching experience. Over the decades I have consciously worked hard to pass on my knowledge through teaching many students, friends and community members.

Was there a piece you made at some point early in your career when you felt like you’d found the vision for your work?

What is your work process like? Do you have set hours you make yourself stay in the studio or do you do it when you can?

All forms and materials have their unique qualities and level of difficulties. Carving a large-scale marble sculpture is probably the most difficult because it requires knowledge, finesse and hard physical labor. Stone can be unforgiving when it has a fracture or a piece is broken while in the process. If this happens you need to start over.

I wanted to create a work that could give people hope in their darkest times and I wanted to serve others in a way that was more than artistic.

There is something in the creation of art that gives me a deep sense of satisfaction.

Learning about processes and ideas has been a natural interest since an early age.

There was no art in grade school back in the 50s and 60s so I had to learn about making art on my own. As a way to earn money I worked as a helper for elders in my neighborhood and my dad. I used those funds to buy art supplies and “How To” drawing books.

There was a large-scale installation sculpture that I created for the University of South Dakota in 1989 that really helped me clarify the vision of my artwork. That year I had read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wanted to develop a work that strongly reflected on the type of quiet strength it took to commit to non-violent protest and helping others overcome their difficult circumstances. The work that I developed was titled “Dangerous Dreamers” and demanded three full months of fabrication and a week to install for it to be realized.

What are the hardest forms to work with when sculpting? Marble, porcelain, metal, etc.

How far along were you into your career when you started doing public art pieces?

February I developed a mechanical drawing of that project so that it could be 3-D rendered by a friend in Baton Rouge. Once the rendering is realized I will develop a budget and submit it as a work of public art in California and Little Rock.

Regarding my studio practice, I have set days that I work in the studio because I generally have three to ten different projects in development at one time. It is usually Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday during the semester and most every day during the work week when I am not in school.

I was very fortunate that within a decade after graduate school I was able to successfully create a few temporary public art works in St. Louis and Chicago.

What factors do you take into consideration when creating work for public spaces?

The factors that I take into consideration for my studio practice is to develop works that are visually accessible, unique in design, and how they integrate into their environment. Another aspect of the way that I create and solve problems is to collaborate with other professionals such as 3-D renderers, 3-D printing companies, engineers, architects, landscape architects and occasionally other sculptors.

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 39

Growing up in South Arkansas, aspiring young artists became quite familiar with Jorge Villegas and Maria Botti Villegas. Both natives of Argentina, the couple have been artists and educators for decades. Jorge moved to the United States in 1978 and settled in El Dorado, where he has taught art in south Arkansas for 40 years. While picking up her works from a group show of Argentinian artists at a Manhattan gallery, Maria stopped by El Dorado to see Jorge. They had met in Buenos Aires in 1990, but she said that, on this trip, she fell in love with him and the town at the same time.

Have you seen any changes in the desire for art education in south Arkansas over the years?

JORGE / Yes, when I first started in 1980, there were no Visual Arts Education in elementary. The Artist-in-Education was the only access children did have to visual arts in Union County. Now it is mandatory to have visual art teachers in elementary.

There is more appreciation and recognition for the arts and their role in developing a wellrounded individual.

MARIA / In the early ’90s when I became an AIE artist in Arkansas, Art was not a mandatory subject in public schools, so the Arts-in -Education project in El Dorado, provided with art education.

I went also to other cities in Arkansas like Little Rock, Batesville, Texarkana, and Flippin to teach special projects during the year.

At least in El Dorado, the desire to have art was very prominent in the schools. Jorge was already working as an AIE visual artist, so he opened the field for me in many ways. Teachers, students, parents and administrators became in contact with murals and art projects beyond the regular art instruction. Also, there were other AIE artists from other parts of Arkansas coming to teach other disciplines like music and theater in our public schools. And there were local artists like Melinda Dodson who had their own studios offering art education to all ages. In 1995 we painted our first mural in town and that opened a lot of interest in murals.

I believe around 2008 Arkansas instituted art as a mandatory subject in schools. Over the years, parents, teachers, and general public have become more aware of the benefits of arts education in brain development. Parents are very enthusiastic to let their kids study art. Some of the elementary and secondary students we had taught are parents themselves. They visit the schools with their kids who are now students in those schools. These parents are thrilled to express their pride and satisfaction to their kids on seeing their work on the walls of the schools they attended many years ago.

Why is studying art creation important for young people?

40 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

JORGE / There is not a subject in education, which target emotions like art. The education of an individual should allow the student to tap into the emotion he/she is feeling. Arts provide with an outlet to emotions. The kids learn to be in touch with their feelings and ponder different ways to provide a proper outlet to their emotions.

Our main decisions in life are done by emotions.

And when education taps into emotional memory, it stays with the individual, otherwise it is only information.

Have either of you taught adults at all? If so, how was it different?

MARIA / Here in El Dorado besides elementary and secondary education I’ve been teaching adults in my studio. I have also worked with special needs adults and children, a very gratifying experience. Nowadays, I’m teaching workshops for adults through virtual classes. We all have a child inside. In that way, we are all the same, children and adults. However, children are sometimes more open to live in the moment without consequences. Adults already bring in a baggage of experiences, which could make adults less able to change and work with their creativity without hesitation.

What role does art play in mental health?

JORGE / Art allows the individual to tap into his/ her best, and to strive for excellence, we all have a spiritual dimension no matter our condition in life, we all leave a record of our lives somehow, and Art is the vehicle who makes this possible.

I have been so lucky through the years to be with students, teachers, principals and individuals teaching art and sharing creative experiences every residence I did contributed to me as an artist and as a person, the Artist in Education Program gave purpose to my life.

To me art is one of the primer ingredients of a happy meaningful life. It goes beyond the making of an object, it carries the human intention to share with other people our way of thinking, we share the way we feel and see, with anybody who approach our work even after we are no longer here.

Art provides the means to sharpen our senses and turn our perceptions into beautiful experiences. Art was and it is the major tool to transfer knowledge and human experience with other generations creating a bridge with the past.

What art classes do each of you teach?

Any favorite subjects?

MARIA / Before the pandemic, I was teaching K to 12 at the South Arkansas Arts Center, and in some of the schools, and with The Gifted and Talented program in El Dorado.

I like all ages, I am goofy, have a big child inside, so I use that sparkle all the time to better connect with my students, I love all ages! Life is

full of discoveries, right? I think that everything I consider important for teaching could be a subject. Sometimes, I teach the life and work of artists from past and present to share the road those artists have transited, but everything is interesting as a subject: nature, science, math, outer space is wonderful too. We do curriculum integration, so we try to integrate everyday life into our teachings and what the teachers need at the schools.

How have you balanced teaching with creating your own work?

MARIA / When I teach, there is an exchange of energy. I tend to focus in the teaching moment, so if I have many classes during the day, I don’t have time during the weekdays to go inside myself, my intimate space, to open the Pandora box. During the weekends, I enter in my studio that is at the back of my house. It takes me sometimes to settle down. Many times inspiration doesn’t come for a few hours, a few days. If I had a busy schedule during the school year I would work over the summer, in silence, to be able to translate ideas into actual objects, paintings, drawings. Covid time has given me lots of ideas and hours to be in my studio with my cats!

Do you have any interesting teaching stories you'd like to share?

JORGE / In the late 80s I was lucky to work with Gene Perry, an inmate on death row at maximumsecurity prison Arkansas. In the early years he was incarcerated, Gene was a very angry man he got in trouble often fighting with other inmates, this landed him into solitary confinement for weeks.

As a result, he wished to improve his behavior, He petition our governor to be allowed to learn to paint and draw before his execution.I visited him for eight years, and when he died he was considered a model inmate with excellent behavior. Art transforms and gives purpose to life.

Kai Coggin has carried the world on her shoulders since she was a child. After her parents separated when she was seven years old, Kai’s mother took her and her little sister and moved to Houston, Texas, from Bangkok, where the family had lived while Kai’s father worked with the United Nations as a speechwriter. Young Kai had to grow up fast.

She helped raise her sister in a new country while her mother worked multiple jobs to support them. Kai also struggled with processing traumatic experiences, faltering self-image and questioning her sexuality. Then she found poetry, and her world changed.

She wrote down her thoughts, feelings and dreams within the pages of an old notebook. She found her shooting star to wish on, and as she grew up, poetry became her true calling.

Now an award-winning poet, author and proud teaching artist, Kai lives in Hot Springs National Park with her wife, Joann, and two pekingeses Genghis and Layla. As a young girl, she searched for a place to belong. Now that she has found it, she shares it with everyone she meets by welcoming them into the safe and healing world of poetry.

Why did you make the decision to bring Wednesday Night Poetry online?

When the pandemic hit in the second week of March 2020, we couldn’t meet at Kollective Coffee+Tea anymore because of the lockdown, so I put out a call on Facebook for the local poets to send me a video of themselves reading a poem. I recorded one too, and I compiled the video poems all into a single upload and posted it at 6:30 p.m.

We didn’t miss a week. I figured out a way for our poets to read at the same time that we would normally meet in person, and it created this sense of togetherness when we were all forced to be apart. I did it again the next week, and opened it up to any poet, anywhere in the world to join. I had a big network of poets on FB, so the locals answered the call again, and more new poets joined. It grew and grew each week. More and more people sent in videos each week, from California to New York City, even poets internationally got word. The New York Times caught wind of it, PBS, Medium. Word spread. Our legacy continued.

Some of the biggest names in poetry have featured for Wednesday Night Poetry in the last year including US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, Jane Hirschfield, Ada Limón, Naomi Shihab-Nye, Former US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Hererra, Inaugural Poet to President Obama Richard Blanco, Nikky Finney, Andrea Gibson, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and dozens of other stars in the poetry world. Every week there are about 40–50 poets in the open mic section too, nationally and internationally. Over 2,000 poets have shared poems in the last almost year.

What's been a constant in your poetry journey?

Light, Love, unveiling Beauty in the unseen, and unflinchingly speaking truth to power.

Do you remember the first time you realized that language had power?

I don’t remember much of my childhood, but my mom recently sent me a picture of a poem she found that I wrote when I was 15, about the planet in crisis. Looking at the typed rhyming stanzas in an artistic broadside next to a construction-paper-created dying planet—it was clear that I already knew and believed in the power of, not only language, but in the power of MY LANGUAGE. I always knew that it would be words that freed me, that would lift me out of my pain and give me wings. The cover of my second book WINGSPAN is an homage to that truth.

What are you most proud of so far in your involvements in statewide arts outreach?

Most recently, I am really humbled and proud of being named the 2020 Best Poet in Arkansas by the Arkansas Times, and [of] winning the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award for Arts in Education. I am proud of the ripples out into the world that I am making every week with Wednesday Night Poetry, for creating a haven for poets all over the country to come and feel heard, feel seen, feel held. I am proud of what I have not yet achieved, for the mountains that I have yet to summit. I am proud of the little 7-year-old girl who found a notebook one day, who wrote her first word of poetry, and dared to dream.

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 41

The Architect MARLON BLACKWELL He put himself through college as a door-to-door Bible salesman. He’s wrestled a bear, received an award from Ronald Reagan and spent part of his career as a cartoonist—not necessarily in that order. But most know Marlon Blackwell as an award-winning architect who has designed and drafted his way around the world.

architects but by owners and stake-holders. It’s more progressive in the way we’re thinking about architecture and its relation to the quality of life in a community.

Marlon is the founder and principal architect at Marlon Blackwell Architects (MBA) and teaches across the country, primarily as the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture and a distinguished professor in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. He is a proud educator, paying keen attention to detail while forming meaningful relationships with his students and clients alike. MBA projects have been widely published and won over 120 state, regional, national and international awards. As an AIA fellow, Marlon has won many prestigious accolades himself, including the 2020 AIA Gold Medal—the architecture institute’s highest honor—and the 2020 Southeastern Conference Professor of the Year. Just this year, he has been elected to become one of the elite 21 members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he is the only member architect with a practice outside of the East and West coasts.

Our projects are like my children; I love them all. In terms of what we were able to accomplish with so little, I’d say the St. Nicholas Church in Springdale. Seeing any work built and so well received by others (not just architects) creates such a great sense of pride for what we do.

How has design evolved and what do you think are the main driving forces in that evolution?

I think it’s evolving to be more synthetic, in the mechanical, electrical, structural and envelope [realms], in terms of how the systems of architecture become more integrated into the process of design and [to be] much more front-ended than it used to be. It’s become more collaborative between other disciplines and the construction industry.

Do you have a specific project you're the most proud of?

Is there a dream project in your drafts you haven't completed yet?

I’ve always wanted to do a project where there’s more darkness than light. Something truly evocative and spiritual. I’ve created these moments in certain projects but have yet to do an entire project along these lines.

Have you always had the belief that architecture can happen anywhere, or was that something you learned as you delved into the practice?

This is something I learned over the years as I realized that for architecture to be truly impactful, it had to be able to happen anywhere and for anyone; it could not just be reserved for the elite. In many ways, it’s the mission of architecture to enrich and dignify the everyday experience of people who engage [with] buildings and places.

As an award-winning, acclaimed architect yourself, who was your mentor as you pursued the craft, and how did their work influence yours?

It’s also evolved to be more self-aware, relative to the impacts it makes socially, environmentally and economically. The desire tends to be in many ways more inclusive and accessible. Driving forces are climate change, social unrest, limited resources as well as the advances of technology both in construction industries and architecture. Digital connectivity is also a driving force with its higher degree of connectivity. It streamlines the process. Everything has been accelerated; the speed [at] which things happen has increased. Yet, there’s still such a role for beauty.

I’ve had many influential friends and mentors along the way: Fay Jones, Glenn Murcutt and Peter Eisenman among others. I think each of them in their own way reminded me that you have to start your practice the way you want to end it. In other words, you really have to start out doing work that has high aspirations and is executed at the highest level possible because you don’t suddenly wake up at the age of 50 and decide you want to do good work. Doing good work is something that you have to practice at every day. Every project counts no matter how prosaic or modest. There is no bread and butter.

How would you describe the evolution of architecture here in Arkansas from Fay Jones's days in the 1950s to now, and where do you see architecture here going?

Besides sketching ideas for your next building, do you have other creative hobbies that you go to when you need to step away?

I think the best architecture in Arkansas, extending from the time of Fay Jones, is work that is still responding to place, the material culture of place as well as the vernacular [needs, methods and practices unique to a region]. The best work I think recognizes the history of a place but also suggests what the future may hold. I think architecture in many ways is now more of a local and global venture, [and] I see higher aspirations and more risk-taking for architecture in Arkansas; this is not just by the

I’m trying to develop those as I work an awful lot. I do like to get out on the river and go fly-fishing. Ati and I have just bought some land on the Kings River where we will build a cabin and where I plan to spend time in the coming years. If I need to just step away for a bit, there’s nothing like a good cigar and bourbon on occasion to get the creative juices going again. .

42 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

You might not know what Kyle Kellams looks like, but if your radio dial has found its way to KUAF 91.3 FM at any point in the last three decades, you know his voice. It has a gravitas that is more inquisitive than authoritative. He’s always searching, probing his guests for answers so he can bring those answers to the people.

Kyle began his career in radio at KTLO in Mountain Home while in high school in 1980. He worked at the 10-watt wonder version of KUAF in college, returned to KTLO after college and briefly served as news director at KIX-104. In 1989, Kyle came back to KUAF and started producing Ozarks at Large in March the next year. The program became a daily show in August 2010. For several years he was the play-by-play radio voice for the University of Arkansas Razorback women's basketball team. He's married to Laura King Kellams and has read almost every Icelandic murder mystery written.

How did Ozarks at Large come about?

The program actually began in the 1980s as a 30-minute, weekly interview program hosted by Dave Edmark and James Russell. Shortly after I started at KUAF in August 1989, both of the hosts had reasons to leave the show and I took over.

Over time it expanded from once a week to the six-daysa-week, 60-minute show it is now.

How has Ozarks at Large changed over the years?

We evolved from just one interview to all kinds of stories. The staff grew, the frequency of shows grew.

The show continues to evolve, too. The shows since the pandemic have stressed, even more, the importance of daily updates to major stories like the virus, the election and more.

people, was the time a few years ago I fell off the stage hosting a fundraiser for the Fayetteville Public Education Foundation.

How do you view objectivity in the context of modern journalism and media consumption?

There's a great question. The effort to report the truth behind a story hasn't altered in a changing media landscape. I think almost all reporters/interviewers desire to be as objective as possible.

Part of that effort includes trying to be aware of all of the biases that could exist.

How have you seen the nature of radio news or news consumption in general change over the years?

An incredible change.

We can all be content producers with social media and can all determine just who or what we want to read, see and hear. An advantage is that more diverse voices can be part of the landscape.

A disadvantage is that far more information can be shared than can be vetted.

Your position with the station has turned you into a public figure in the community. What sort of balance must you strike to maintain your integrity as a journalist?

How important is community radio, in your opinion?

That's a great question.

I absolutely love my chances to work with other organizations in the region. If there is any chance a story about one of those organizations needs to be handled by somebody else on the Ozarks at Large staff, there are wildly talented people like Antoinette Grajeda, Jacqueline Froelich, Daniel Caruth, Timothy Dennis and Zuzanna Sitek to work on those stories.

As more broadcast outlets become owned and programmed by entities owned outside of the cities where the broadcast originates, public and community radio can offer local stories, voice and music.

What is something you wished the public understood about journalism that they may not realize?

Do you have any outstanding interviews or stories that you are proud of in your career?

Plenty. My conversation with Bruce Dern (connected with the Bentonville Film Festival) was a highlight. I became quite adept at editing bleeps into the interview. There was an early conversation with Jackie Torrence remains a favorite because of her attitude toward grace and life. The singer Rumer in the Firmin-Garner Performance Studio. There are so many over the past 31 years that left made an impact.

Do you have any embarrassing moments you'd like to share?

Since the show is almost always produced before airtime, embarrassing moments are edited out and often erased from my memory. Not associated with the show, but in front of a few hundred

Real reporters are most interested in getting to the truth of a story and struggle (before and after the story is produced) with making sure as many angles are covered as possible.

What are your predictions for the future of community radio, whether it be your program or the medium in general?

I'd say it's a robust future...as long as finances are good. The desire for stories based in the places where people live will only increase.

Let's get philosophical for a second, does truth really exist?

It does. But it is rarely, if ever, a single-layered phenomenon. Rarely a single truth, but many angles that add up to a truth.

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 43

How many films have you guys made together and what is the workflow dynamic in terms of who takes lead?

LARRY / I think the thing that has always worked about us working

together is that we have— and I've said this before—we have mutual respect for one another. And as Dale has said, I'm kind of quoting him here. We're not the same. We bring something different to the table. And we bring something to the table when we're working together. We have a partnership that works. I know I have always enjoyed working with Dale. [...] He's one of my best friends. He's more like a brother than a friend. And I've never worked on anything with him that I didn't enjoy working on. I mean, one of the things is that I know I get to work with him in the field.

DALE / Well, I think one thing that, like Larry said, we're different

and that's because we kind of got started in the business coming from a different point of view and a different skill set. I mean, I wanted to be a shooter, I wanted to be with the camera, and I've never really given that up. Even though later on, I started producing films on my own. I always wanted to shoot them and edit them. So the camera kind of brought me into it. And when I met Larry at Channel Seven, we would always, when we do stories, I was the shooter, he was the reporter. And we had a lot of fun just doing those little short stories, but then we didn't realize that later on, we were going to get into a lot more of that kind of stuff.

But early on, it was just always fun. Like Larry said, we just always got along real well. And we had all that stuff in common. We were coaching Little League baseball together and stuff like that. So we just, you know, had a lot going on in our lives that interconnected.

But at AETN, [...] I remember when I first got the courage … and got the opportunity you know, the first thing I did was start running my scripts by Larry, because I'd never written a script before. And he helped me so much and [showed me] how to write. I knew how to shoot and edit, and I knew how to tell a story, but I just didn't feel confident writing.

44 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

Why did you decide to teach documentary filmmaking in journalism school, and what is the mentoring relationship like with your students?

LARRY / When I see you guys out there doing your own projects,

[or] when a student comes through and they produced their first year film and they produced their thesis film and they're defending, my comment has always been the same: “But what are you gonna work on next?” You know, because for Dale and I, we've always worked on something next and you're not really a filmmaker until you're constantly working on film projects, figuring that the one that you're working on now, you want to make it the best you can make it. Hopefully it'll be the best thing you've ever done because it's the only one that you're working on right now. But you know, as far as why we taught this in journalism, you can teach documentary film from any number of disciplines, but the reason why we taught it in journalism is because we were journalism professors and we really wanted to create a documentary film focus, and that's what we've done in the master’s program.

DALE / You know, a lot of times a student would come in and

just wanted to talk to me about filmmaking. And they were like, well, you know, how do you get into it? You know? And I would say, “Well, are you making a film right now? Are you working on

anything right now?” Even if they just had no experience really, because, I mean, I think today there's really no excuse. We had some excuses back in my day because I mean, cameras are like $60,000 and access to editing equipment was you just had to work at a TV station or our film production. But you have no, you don't have those obstacles now. So it's, you know, sky's the limit.

What's been some of the most important lessons that you've given your students over the years?

LARRY / When you're working on a project, [or] when you're

working on a film, that's the only film you're working on right now, more than likely, and the need to make that one as good as you can make it [...]—making sure you get the story right, and you get the focus narrowed, all those things matter—make the project. Every project is “the project.”

DALE / We don't usually have a budget to travel. Sometimes

we've been lucky and been able to do that. But some of the best films I've made have just been little small subjects that you just have. There's so much in it because humans, you know, that's where the stories are and they're all over the place. So I think that's another thing that a lot of times students didn't realize that you can tell a great story just by going next door sometimes.

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 45

REPRESENTATION MATTERS. It’s a powerful phrase, but what does it mean? More importantly, what does it mean to you?

For me, it’s more action than the words themselves. It’s when you see something and say, “Yes! This.” I experience these “A ha!” moments more frequently these days, but one of the most recent occurrences happened while watching the inauguration in January.

It was exciting that Kamala Harris was ticking off a lot of vice president firsts — the first woman, the first Black American and the first Indian American — but what caught my attention was the person swearing her in, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and third woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

As a Mexican American woman, I was struck by this initially.

After taking a moment to process, I was genuinely moved to tears by the scene as a whole — a Brown woman swearing in a Black woman.

It was the first time I had witnessed something like this, and it was absolutely the first time such an exchange had occurred at that high level of government, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before on a local level.

It’s conceivable that somewhere in this country, a woman of color has sworn in another woman of color to office.

Noticing the absence of something while recognizing the significance of seeing it for the first time is an example of how and why representation matters. The absence of stories about people of color does not mean they are not

46 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

there, it’s more likely that they simply aren’t being presented to a wide audience.

That’s where Arkansas Soul comes in. We want to amplify the voices of Black, Indigenous and people of color living in Arkansas. Arkansas Soul is a nonprofit digital publication sharing content created by and for BIPOC Arkansans. Our goal is to share the experiences of minority communities through audio, video and the written word.

At Arkansas Soul, our role is to represent communities of color that are often left out of the larger narrative of this state even though they have been and continue to be a vital part of our home.

We are here to listen to and lift up your stories, your truths, your hopes.

We look forward to the conversations to come and are excited to offer a new platform for those who have felt like their voices historically have not been heard. It is an honor and a privilege to share the stories of the people who are the soul of Arkansas.

Thank you for welcoming us and thank you to The Idle Class for giving us the opportunity to introduce ourselves to a new audience. Cheers to good things to come!

— Antoinette Grajeda, Editor-in-Chief, Arkansas Soul

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 47

K E Y T E A M ME M BE RS

NIKETA REED Niketa Reed is the founder and executive director of Arkansas Soul. She teaches digital content and diversity in media courses at the University of Arkansas School Journalism and Strategic Media.

She is also a native of Peoria, Illinois, and transplant to the South by way of Memphis.

ANTOINETTE GRAJEDA Antoinette Grajeda is Editor-in-Chief of Arkansas Soul, the host of the Affirmative Action Podcast and a Northwest Arkansasbased journalist. She has covered race, culture, politics, health education and the arts in Arkansas for nearly 15 years.

48 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 49

THE WAY OF OUR WORK AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PODCAST When you’re not part of the majority culture, it can be difficult to make yourself heard. Affirmative Action creates a space where marginalized communities can have their voices amplified. Each month, our podcast explores cultural and social issues from a variety of perspectives with the goal of expression and education. To date, topics have included the Black Lives Matter movement, the impact of the pandemic on education and the importance of representation in politics.

TAKE A HIKE This weekly series examines diversity in the outdoors. With mountains, forests, rivers and lakes across the state, there are plenty of opportunities for exploring the Great Outdoors in Arkansas. In each installment of this series, we highlight one of the Natural State’s 52 state parks and talk to BIPOC Arkansans about what they enjoy about spending time in nature.

PERSONAL ESSAYS Through our personal essays, we hand the mic to Arkansans to share how being a person of color has impacted their experience of living in the Natural State. We’ve heard an Arkansas native discuss the challenge of defending her home state to classmates at her Ivy League school because of racist incidents experienced while growing up as an Asian American in Arkansas. In another essay, a queer Black woman explores some of the challenges of relaxing in nature when it’s a predominately white space that often doesn’t feel welcoming or safe. Have a story to share? Send an email to antoinette@argotsoul.com.

50 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

Through my story and the documenting of utilizing creative expression to aid in healing from grief, I hope to normalize speaking power to truth in the Black community.

Using our h.e.ART & Soul | A new video series highlights the healing power of the arts.

WORDS / NIKETA REED The arts are a source of entertainment, but they can also be a source of emotional healing. Arkansas Soul will explore this concept in the new h.e.ART & Soul web series, a program that will feature Lakisha Bradley of My-T-By-Design Therapeutic Art Studio and other Black artists who will guide viewers through creative expression forms of healing, dealing and coping.

The series will serve as equal parts educational, instructional and participatory for Black audiences. The first eight episodes of the series will run on a bi-weekly basis, streaming in Spring 2021 on YouTube. The goal of the series is to address stress, trauma, anxiety, fear, grief, trauma, self-esteem and emotional pain in the Black community through different forms of expressive art therapy.

Arkansas Soul board member Synetra Hughes of Visionairi Enterprises introduced us to the concept for the series in sharing her own experience with grief and opening our eyes to the power of art and expression for healing.

“This process will start with my story as a Black woman who has experienced great trauma in the last year of losing a young child,” she says.“Through my story and the documenting of utilizing creative expression to aid in healing from grief, I hope to normalize speaking power to truth in the Black community.”

Hughes is hopeful the series will inspire others around the state to share their stories as well.

“Providing this platform might be the inspiration or motivation that someone who is struggling to deal with the difficulties in their life needs in order to start to heal and move closer to finding purpose in their pain,” she says.

In addressing these issues in mental health through creative expression, it is the series creators’ biggest hope that

members of the Black community, particularly those in Northwest Arkansas, can recognize themselves in others’ stories, learn methods in coping and discover new ways to connect with others who share their background – all while supporting Black artists and performers who may have been displaced from work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even before the pandemic, those who self-identified their place in the fragile Northwest Arkansas Black community suffered from widespread isolation, lack of connection and mounting challenges to their sense of belonging, wellbeing, reoccurring microaggressions and massive lack of representation.

These challenges compete with those experienced across the board for both minority and dominant populations – issues at the core of many mental health programs such as grief, trauma and pain.

The h.e.ART & Soul series is made possible through a grant from the second round of the CACHE Bridge Fund, awarded by the Creative Arkansas Community Hub & Exchange (CACHE) at the Northwest Arkansas Council.

Arkansas Soul will provide free art kits on a first-come, firstserved basis for audience members to follow along at home on select episodes that require access to certain art supplies and materials.

The series will also create opportunities for local Black artists to showcase their craft in the following categories: • Painting • Dance • Poetry • Photography • Music • Theatre • Textile works • Arts & Crafts

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 51

FROM THE ATOLL TO THE OZARKS A student-led podcast shares the story of the state’s Marshallese community.

WORDS / ANTOINETTE GRAJEDA PHOTOS COURTESY / ARKANSAS STORY VAULT Northwest Arkansas is home to one of the largest populations of Marshallese outside of the Marshall Islands. An estimated 15 to 20,000 Marshallese live in the region and their rich history is being shared through the Arkansas Atoll podcast.

Benetick Maddison is a member of the Marshallese community who works as the project specialist for youth, climate and nuclear issues at the Marshallese Educational Initiative in Springdale. He participated in an episode of the podcast in which he discusses the importance of educating people about the United States’ relationship with the Marshall Islands.

From 1946 to 1958, the U.S. conducted nuclear weapons testing on the Marshall Islands. The Marshallese were “basically forced to sacrifice our health and our islands for the good of mankind,” Maddison says. What happened over the course of those 12 years is part of American history and it should be part of the national curriculum in the U.S., he says.

“It's really frustrating and sad that when I open a history book or when my fellow Marshallese open history books, the only image of a bomb we see is the one in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but it's like, where's the other 67 nuclear weapons that were tested?” he says.

In addition to the history of nuclear weapons testing, Arkansas Atoll explores climate change, working in the poultry industry and health disparities within the Marshallese community over the course of six episodes. The podcast is a product of the Arkansas Story Vault at the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History. It is co-produced by the School of Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Arkansas.

The project began as a video production in January 2020, but students adapted it into a podcast once the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Octavia Rolle is one of five graduate and undergraduate students at the U of A who worked on the podcast. Rolle is a senior journalism student studying advertising and public relations. Producing this podcast was a new experience for Rolle who says she enjoyed working with members of the Marshallese community who were “welcoming and open.”

“Seeing everything come together, I would definitely be interested in doing something like this again and uncovering more stories,” she says.

52 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

Rolle grew up in Northwest Arkansas and recalls attending summer camp with Marshallese children, but she did not know the details of their culture until she worked on this project.

“I think the overall experience was really eye-opening just because like I said, I lived here my entire life,” she says. “I knew of the Marshallese people, but I knew absolutely nothing of their history.”

The students felt a responsibility to tell the story of the Marshallese community accurately, so they hosted a Zoom session where Marshall Islanders could listen to the podcast and provide feedback, which informed the editing process.

Colleen Thurston, assistant professor of journalism and strategic media, helped supervise the project and says when asking for assistance, they tried to be mindful of how Marshall Islanders are being disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and are dealing with a lot in their community.

“These are their stories and it’s their community and they’ve let us share them and we’re trying to take the best possible approach that we can to share their perspectives,” Thurston says.

None of the students or supervisors are part of the Marshallese community and say they are grateful they were allowed into the community so they could get to know the Marshall Islanders better.

“I think it’s really important to acknowledge the collaboration that we had and the trust from the Marshallese community and thank them for sharing their stories and for allowing us to share them,” Thurston says.

Maddison says he is grateful to the students for their interest in highlighting his community in the new podcast, which will serve as a great way to educate people about the history of the Marshallese people and share their narrative with the broader community.

“They even allowed the interviewees to listen to the podcast to make sure we were okay with it before releasing it, so I appreciate them for that,” Maddison says. “Despite the pandemic and the amount of stress that comes with it, the students put together an excellent podcast.”

All episodes of Arkansas Atoll are available now on the Arkansas Story Vault website.

// STORYVAULT.UARK.EDU

It's really frustrating and sad that when I open a history book or when my fellow Marshallese open history books, the only image of a bomb we see is the one in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but it's like, where's the other 67 nuclear weapons that were tested?

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 53

54 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

A Little Rock -based agency highlights Hispanic Artists in Arkansas.

WORDS / ANTOINETTE GRAJEDA PHOTOS / X3MEX Artists are often not as wellknown as the murals they create and that’s the way José Hernández prefers it.

“I like to promote my work instead of myself,” he says.

Over the past few years, Hernández has been involved with the 7th Street Mural Project in Little Rock. Since 2015, artists have created murals under a pair of railroad overpasses on West 7th Street and last summer, Hernández added a portrait of George Floyd to the colorful concrete walls.

Social issues affecting the community are the focus of his work and because murals are public art, they provide a way to create a dialogue about these topics with the thousands of people who pass by.

“That’s what I’m trying to do — educate, inform or just make you think and plant that little seed in there,” he says. “Maybe [it will] grow into a bigger idea and even inspire you to do something else or even make your day better.”

Originally from Mexico, Hernández moved to Jonesboro in 1993. He took graphic design and painting courses at Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia before returning to Arkansas in 2010. While traveling, Hernández says he noticed graffiti and murals as he stared out the car window. He fell in love with the artform in part because of its accessibility to the masses.

“It’s something that everybody can see. It’s not just in galleries where just a select few can go,” he says.

Today Hernández is a full-time artist with his own studio and gallery in Little Rock called Dedicated Visual Art Studio & Gallery. While he is based in Ccentral Arkansas, Hernández has created artwork in other parts of the state. In 2020, for example, he participated in the inaugural Sprayetteville Street Art Festival where he created a mural in Fayetteville.

In addition to murals, Hernández also creates smaller works like paintings that are sometimes promoted through The Latino Art Project, an agency that promotes Hispanic culture, artists and subject matter through the visual arts.

While he is not an artist himself, owner Will Hogg says he has always loved art and created The Latino Art Project to support Hispanic artists.

“Living and working here in Ccentral Arkansas, I discovered that I didn’t see very much art by Latino artists,” he says.

“Whether it be in galleries or exhibitions, it just seemed like there was an absence of any representation of Latino artists.”

In 2015, Hogg organized an exhibition featuring Latino artists as a fundraiser for a nonprofit he works with called Seis Puentes Hispanic Outreach. The event was a “smashing success” and afterward, Latino artists approached Hogg about participating in future exhibitions. The positive reaction to the fundraising exhibit prompted him to create The Latino Art Project which has since hosted more than 50 exhibits that have featured artists from around the state and the country. Some artists living abroad have also submitted works, Hogg says.

“It’s been pretty cool to bring in artists from different parts of the country, different parts of the world even, and exhibit that art here in Arkansas and showcase these Latino artists that again, I don’t see get a lot of the representation that they deserve,” he says.

With The Latino Art Project, Hogg shares artwork through exhibitions and online marketing for free, though he does take a commission if a piece is sold. Muralist José Hernández says the agency provides a helpful service to full-time artists who don’t have time to promote their work.

“He’s passionate about it and he really cares, which is important because a lot of promoters just do it for the money and it shows,” Hernández says.

In addition to supporting artists, The Latino Art Project helps promote culture and eliminates divisions between communities.

“I think that helps break those barriers and opens up people’s horizons and eyes to something more of our culture,” Hernández says. “We’re not just people that come here to work, we’re also artists and entrepreneurs and all kinds of people.” // X3MEX.COM // FACEBOOK.COM/THELATINOARTPROJECT

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 55

LET’S BEGIN BY A

56 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

ACKNOWLEDGING

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 57

LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FALL SHORT IN HONORING INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AN ESSAY BY SUMMER WILKIE

The purpose of a land acknowledgement is not to acknowledge the land though. You’ve likely heard of the concept of a Land Acknowledgment statement.

Increasingly shared as an opening for events and on websites of woke institutions, these statements are meant to communicate solidarity with the injustices of Indigenous people. The device can range from moving to perfunctory.

As a Native American person, it’s sad that simple acknowledgement of stolen land and centuries of erasure feels like progress. It is, but these statements can cause some very uncomfortable cognitive dissonance when poorly worded or in certain contexts.

As a Native American student at the University of Arkansas and an on-and-off Fayetteville resident of seven years, a land acknowledgement doesn’t begin to address the lack of representation of Native people in Fayetteville. Until action is taken to identify and empower Indigenous people, accurate history is taught, and land-based justice is carried out, a land acknowledgement statement feels mostly empty and alienating.

58 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

At the University of Arkansas, Indigenous people played a part in our establishment and legacy.

The Osage ceded most of the Ozarks to the U.S. government in 1808 with the understanding that they would be protected and allowed to hunt and reside on the remainder of their territory, but within 60 years of the ratification of that treaty, the Osage were confined to a small reservation. Their population had declined drastically due to the systemic slaughter of their primary food source, the American bison, and disease. Outright fraud and cruel treatment allowed for settlers to move freely into present-day Fayetteville including Cherokee people seeking opportunity and refuge from the violence and land theft in the east.

Today Arkansas’s first people, primarily the Osage, Quapaw, and Caddo Nations, endure as federally recognized tribal nations in Oklahoma where they were forced by the United States government. While every land acknowledgment at the University of Arkansas at least mentions these nations, their people continue to live the consequences of upheaval and genocide.

A Board of Trustees policy was established in 1985 to waive out-of-state tuition to these and a few

other tribes with history in Arkansas, but no formal agreement or invitation has ever been extended to these tribes to come back to Arkansas for school. We don’t have relationships in place with their Nations to recruit students. Their history is not a required course for college students here. Our research agendas are not benefiting these Nations. Native American students don’t even have so much as a room on campus designated for their use.

I hope you can begin to understand why a Native American student at the University of Arkansas might be irritated more than honored when their class begins with a compulsory land acknowledgment statement or they stumble across one on a website.

One thing you’ll rarely hear mentioned in a land acknowledgment at the U of A is the fact that with the removal of the people from their ancestral land, they were forced to abandon sacred ceremonial sites to be pillaged by European settlers. Personal collections of artifacts amassed from the original looting of sacred sites throughout Arkansas and some in Oklahoma eventually wound up in the University of Arkansas Museum collection. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act meant some items were returned to descendants, but many remain in the museum’s collection. Arkansas’s Indigenous people can come to school here without ever even knowing about the beautiful pieces of art created by their ancestors currently on a shelf behind closed doors.

Museum staff made steps toward improving outreach to Native American students recently. I’m hopeful new and lasting partnerships can raise awareness about Indigenous history in Arkansas and enrich our campus and begin to heal wrongs done to Arkansas’s First People. However, as long as the narratives related to those objects remain in the hands of academia, stripped of their cultural significance and separated from the context provided by their descendants and the larger historical narrative, the collection is simply contributing to the institution’s passive erasure and continued cultural genocide of Arkansas’ First People.

Tribal governments should be empowered as much as possible to care for, share and research their own cultural artifacts at the University of Arkansas and in general. A starting place might be to share all existing academic research related to the artifacts and make sure future research is guided by or in collaboration with the descendants. Land-based justice in this area would be reconnecting people with their ancestors’ sacred sites from where the artifacts were stolen.

The onus is on the university to build the necessary relationships and programs to reconnect Indigenous people with their sacred objects and places where the tribal government does not have the resources to do so.

Investigating the origins of the land granted to the State of Arkansas by the federal Morrill Act of 1862, also known as the Land-Grant College Act, reveals an appalling connection between the U of A and exploitation of Indigenous people throughout the country. About 10.7 million acres of Indigenous land across the continent were seized and granted to states for the creation of colleges. In Arkansas, almost 150,000 was given to the state and in turn sold to raise the principal endowment of the University of Arkansas. These profits are on the school’s ledger today.

To borrow a concept from the Black Lives Matter movement, passivity is complicity. The University of Arkansas continues to benefit passively from the genocide and exploitation of Indigenous people, and land acknowledgements without action to back them up are beginning to reek of privilege. Due to the lack of awareness, we need to keep making and revising the acknowledgments, but they’re not enough and land isn’t all that was taken.

Our thousands-year-old oral, place-based knowledge continues to be arrogantly discredited by academia.

Education became a violent means of control and assimilation and continues to be a traumatic experience for many of our young people. Our languages and the unique perspectives held within have been nearly extinguished. Not to mention our health. Land is a good place to start though. These issues are all connected to land.

The land isn’t a stagnant thing and its value isn’t only monetary. Land is a complex system of life.

The ecosystems are always changing. They hold the shape of we who manipulate them and a record of terrestrial and cosmic influence. The influence of contemporary humans is crude and harsh. We are a young society, those of us here now. The influence of those who came here can still be seen, to Northwest Arkansas, to Fayetteville, those who shaped the land and whom the land shaped.

They acknowledged the land. They communed with the land. Their descendants are knowledge keepers, and we need action to restore connections and recognize Indigenous peoples’ right to this land.

We all return to the land eventually.

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 59

CREATIVE DESIGN SERVICES

LET’S START SOMETHING NEW VISIT RRIPPEDDESIGNS.COM

In this excerpt, Shores mentions one of the many gatherings that Charles J. Finger hosted at Gayeta, his home in Fayetteville:

Finger’s friend George Maddox “helped host a large dinner party in the main house, a Gayetan version of the New Face dinners that . . . their New York friends held each year . . . In a lengthy account of this occasion, Finger referred to Maddox as his ‘counterpoise.’ ‘There were twelve of us, and the conversation, desultory (as table talk should be), but lively, kept up well until cigars were lit and the table cleared.’ Here Finger alluded to Dr. Johnson’s Table Talk, an anthology of excerpts from Boswell’s biography that became the model for a type of memoir focusing on impromptu comments made around a dining table . . .

“As he wrote his usual New Year’s greeting for All’s Well, Finger recalled the harbor in Seattle and repeated his longing for a new adventure with a few companions . . . He wanted to escape ‘nonsense about money’ and live ‘golden hours’ of games and 60 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

talk and music and ‘friendly silence.’ From Seattle they could sail away, ‘knowing that strange delight that comes with the farewell to land, and the sight of far-flung, haze-hung mountains.’ Employing the eroticism of the sailboat on open water that he introduced in Seven Horizons, Finger imagined ‘the delight of the music of waters; and the delight of flying sea-birds sharp etched on blue and gone in a flash.’ His rhapsody went on: ‘There would be tropic nights, after the tropic sunset all copper and gold and crimson glory, with legions of stars.’ The suggestive image of the precipice came to him again: Mountains would be ‘rough ramparts from which unleashed lightnings [sic] might leap.’ Reaching the Chilean archipelago, he and his unnamed friends would be ‘free and unrestrained and liberal.’ ‘O, come, let us go, bold hearts!’ he exclaimed.” // UAPRESS.COM

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 61

62 L E G A C Y ISS UE 20 2 1

caN’t WaIt To taKE a bITe

coMInG soON.... coVId ProTOcoLs WilL be FOlLowED • idLEcLasSmAG.coM/bLacKApPle2021

WWW.I DL E CL AS S M AG . CO M 63

ARKANSAS FOOD HALL OF FAME ARKANSAS EATERIES COLLECTION

AUTHENTIC ARKANSAS FOOD HISTORY IS SERVED SERIES BEANS, GREENS & CORNBREAD COOKOFF SWEET POTATO PIE CONTEST

Authentic Arkansas celebrates the unique and delicious food traditions across our state.

We’re here to help you discover the distinct flavors of Arkansas.

Arkansas Arts Council Arkansas Historic Preservation Program Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission Arkansas State Archives

Delta Cultural Center Historic Arkansas Museum Mosaic Templars Cultural Center Old State House Museum

ArkansasHeritage.com